At the end of a meeting last month, the chairperson was trying to set a date for a meeting in the new year.
She asked everyone to check their calendars and see if a bunch of busy people could come up with a date that worked for everyone.
As I was putting my papers away I noticed everyone was checking their phones, tablets or other devices and sounding out prospective dates.
She was looking at me and I said, “I’ll check my calendar and get back to you.”
She looked a bit confused so I explained that ‘my calendar’ was an actual calendar with a different classic car photo for each month and it was hanging in my kitchen.
It has big squares for each day so that I can write in appointments and it works very well.
Each morning, as the coffee is pouring into the pot, I walk over and look at the calendar and it tells me where I am supposed to be and what time.
I’ll admit, sometimes I struggle to read the scrawl that was hastily written while talking on the phone and on one occasion, I had written ‘Friday the 18th’ on the space for Friday the 18th, so I had to wait until somebody called me and asked if I was coming to the meeting that day.
It’s not a perfect system, but it works for me and some weekends, if there nothing written there, I’m not sure if I actually have the weekend off or if I’ve forgotten something.
I was discussing planning ahead with a friend the other day and he explained that he doesn’t share his plans for the day or the week with anyone.
His explanation is that if you do too much planning, the word ‘premeditation’ starts getting thrown around in the courtroom.
He’s not a close friend.
As my 2017 calendar is getting ready to be put up, this one with a different photo of a cabin on a lake, I have noticed that there are already a few days booked in January and even some into March, May and June and a couple as far away as September.
How optimistic we are that we plan that far ahead into our lives.
Some say if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans for tomorrow.
Someone runs a red light, a piece of plaque lets go from an artery wall, one of your adult children shows up back at your door with their suitcases.
Any one of those events can wipe your calendar clean in an instant.
But it is the optimism and hopefulness that carries us forward.
We should be looking forward to the March birth, the June vacation, and the September wedding.
If we sit in the dark and expect the worst, that’s probably what we’ll get.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could treat the end of every day the way we treat December 31st?
Imagine if we celebrated that we hand survived each day with banging pots wearing colored hats and were looking forward to the day ahead?
A card verse I received says, “Thanks for lessons, 2016! 2017, I’m ready, bring it on!”
Plan each day to the fullest, make it worthwhile.
It’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years. May the New Year be kind to you all.
At least that’s what McGregor says.