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| Aztec Calendar |
We’re just past the halfway mark for 2011.
Where do the days go?
A friend of mine says they go to a place in Yonkers, where they rent a condo near the river, close to Stew Leonard’s.
Apparently the days like free food samples.
Who doesn’t?
Most people think of a life as a consistent series of "immeasurable" days that, eventually, seem to fly, faster and faster, with each click of the clock, especially if it’s digital.
If your clock is analogue, then they take the train, because they enjoy the scenery.
If your clock is analogue, then they take the train, because they enjoy the scenery.
In the beginning, we take all these indivdual days for granted, but slowly come to realize just how precious and limited these “days” really are. And then we have that to worry about too, on top of just about every other frickin thing we worry about, day in and day out.
Still, even after a brief respite of appreciation for these finite days, we again somehow manage to take them for granted, blow them off and sleepwalk, if not outright sleep, right through them.
On the other hand, some people think of life as just one really loooooong day…with lots of naps. These people also think that Elvis works at Kohl’s, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and occasionally on Sunday as a fill in when needed.
I know that sounds silly to some, but if you think of it that way, it does kind of make a little bit of sense. Elvis probably would want the weekends off.
No…I mean about the life being one loooooong day thing. If we could wrap our heads around this slippery concept— that we only get ONE loooooong day in our lifetime—wouldn’t that day become a little bit more significant than, say last Thursday when you set the toaster oven on fire, spilled your coffee on your new white shorts, dropped your bagel in the kitty litter and stepped on the dog?
I bet that day was kind of a bust from the start and you just let it spiral downhill, out of control, from that point forward. But if you thought of it as just a couple of ticks off the clock of your very loooooong day, then maybe it wouldn’t have seemed so bad. Maybe you wouldn’t have been so willing to let some trivial events ruin your one and only loooooong day. I mean did the dog let it ruin his?
The problem we seem to have when we think of our days, our individual days, is that we always compare them to our past days.
So, say on July 26th, 1999 we went to see Springsteen at the Meadowlands.
That was a great day by default. Even with the dude with the funny haircut kicking the back of your seat, or the slightly overweight woman with the braid, who liked to sway her hips in time to every song, even the fast ones…especially the fast ones.
Okay…I admit that’s a stretch, but I wanted to show off my old ticket stub, which is not really the ticket stub I wanted to show off, which was the August 25th , 1978, New Haven Coliseum ticket stub, which was my first ever Springsteen concert, which I know I have, but can’t find…which is really ruining my day….
But I digress….
See how that happens?
The point is, last Christmas is not this Christmas, or birthday or summer vacation in the Falkland’s. Each one is brand spanking new and shouldn’t be judged based on the quality of past ones, which are mostly memory enhanced anyway.
I mean would you judge the quality of your morning coffee with the quality of your evening coffee?
Would you say, this coffee isn’t the exact same blend as the one I had at 6 AM, and fail to enjoy it because you’re spending the whole time your sipping it wondering why it tastes a little different?
And then before you know it, it’s a moot point because the coffee is gone. Which is kind of how some of us waste our days...not to mention our French Roast...and French Toast for that matter.
Every Christmas, birthday or summer vacation in the Falkland’s is special and unique unto itself. So we need to stop ruining the one we have “now” because of some silly desire to recreate the ones gone by.
It makes as much sense as comparing and qualifying the earliest sunrises of our one loooooong day with the one we’re watching today…here and now…in this moment.
Or maybe that’s just me…
My faithful daily “Little Zen” calendar says it all, way better than I ever could.
From a dude named Thich Nhat Hanh:
Our true home is in the present moment.
To live in the present moment is a miracle.
The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green Earth.
in the present moment.
So there you go….have a good loooooong day….
Okay?
Okay....
Okay?
Okay....
I really liked this one (I'm a little behind I know.)
ReplyDeleteSomething so nail-on-the-head about "this is not how I imagined my July 26ths to be. Where the hell’s “The Boss”?"
I have written a diary since the winter of my tenth birthday so the old days sing in my little head. I remember July 9th clearly because that's the day I got a spider bite at camp and my foot swelled all up and I got to miss swimming LESSONS but not Rec Swim.
Also I heard TNH once; he spoke to a sell-out crowd at the convention center in Boston just after 9/11. I will never forget what he said once I was able to cut through and decipher his still-thick accent. "Those who have ears, listen!" (That'a from another religious tradition. :-))
"Those who have ears, listen!" but we're too busy talking to hear...unless it's on our IPod!
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