Thursday kicks off the official start of another holiday season. 2024 is lurking just around the corner and it’s hard to believe, at least for me it is, that this year is almost over. The scope of this post is twofold. First I’d like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. It’s the holiday that throughout my life has brought special memories. Both because it is a day that,t always hovered around my birthday, every few years even on it. And because for many years it meant the gathering together of grandparents, Aunts and Uncles, cousins, and other odd relatives and friends. Thanksgiving was our family glue as it was for many families. It was not so much a single-day event, but more of a 3-day celebration of life, love, and family. Although I know there are a few families who still hold tight to this almost American tradition. Sadly, so many are like mine and have scattered to the four corners of the country, using distance as an excuse for why they can no longer make it. Relatives are now strangers and too many would not recognize each other if they were standing next to one another in a grocery checkout line. We often get caught up so much in the day-to-day trappings of our lives that we lose track of the really important things. Who honestly believes that when the day comes and you are on your deathbed you are going to wish you spent more time at the office. Try this experiment for me. It is an idea borrowed from a short story I recently read called 1000 Marbles by Jeff Davis. Get a glass jar and several rolls of pennies. The younger you are the larger your jar will need to be and the more pennies you will have to have. Now here’s where you will have to do some simple math. First, take your age and multiply by 104. Take that number and subtract it from 7800. Remember this new number and don’t forget to check your work. Place the same number of pennies in the jar as you got from this little math problem I gave you. See, 75 is the average age to which we get to spend on this big blue marble, and 7800 is the number of Saturdays and Sundays you will experience in that time. Some more and some less. If you did the math right, the pennies represent the number of two-day weekends you have left until you turn 75. Now each Sunday evening before you lay down to sleep, reach into that jar and remove 2 cents. That ever-dwindling cash of pennies is the candle of your life. When it goes out there will likely be no more light. The point is, each week make sure to make your 2 cents count. Hopefully, this exercise will make you think about the preciousness of time, and how limited it is. Should you run out of pennies, every day is a bonus gift. Be sure to delight in everyone you get to unwrap.
Happy Thanksgiving!
