The Calendar Flips...

By Jackie Pelletier

The view of my desk calendar reminds me that another year is about to evaporate...twelve months, 52 weeks and 365 days just gone, disappeared as quickly as the steam rising over my morning coffee...  where did the time go...what did I do and how did I spend it?

A calendar flip for decades has meant for some hope and change for new beginnings: to lose weight, to change jobs, to get engaged or maybe divorced, to be a bit other minded, to travel, to read more, to get a pet, to stop drinking, to get healthy, to do more, spend less, get a hobby...these may not be resolutions but these glances back can be prompts to encourage us to do some reflection of not only where we were but how we did what we did with the time...

We humans are a unique breed of being...I have heard it said that "all people are broken" and I tend to believe that. There is no escaping the cracks and fractures we develop as we walk these dirt and paved roads. Nature, nurture, circumstances, decisions and choices do, to a large degree, impact our travel and lets face it, we make some better choices than others . We are, for the most part, products of those choices.  We hustle, we plan, we negotiate, we prepare, we struggle and still at times our expectations fall short.  I think this is what we call living our life and it is anything but a level playing field.  We march on marked  all of our crevices, doing the best we can and every minute of every day we lose the one thing we cannot negotiate, we cannot save, we cannot duplicate and we cannot repeat...TIME.

My view and use of time have morphed greatly and that's what it should do I think.  In youth we feel that time drags and by 21 we don't seem to give time much thought... on the 40th birthday trip around we begin to factor time into a few things...65 really throws some excitement into thoughts of perhaps free time and I am here to say that 75 catches us by the throat... white hair, making groans rising from a chair, a much shorter golf swing, sitting down to dress,  a pill box on the bed stand, having to study for a drivers license renewal and the repeated flipping of many calendar pages, time is getting short and extremely valuable.  I can't slow it, repeat it or control it; so, I work to recognize it, value it and honor it spending it like it's my last dollar.  And in so doing I chose to text, write, call, visit and spend the time I have left with other humans that fill my heart and nurture my soul. I think it was a great use of my time.
Cheers and hope to all for a thoughtful Calendar Flip!  








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