We were sitting around the coffee shop discussing how we had spent New Year’s Eve and I must say that the fact everyone in my group remembered what they did New Year’s Eve was pretty boring. I seem to recall that in the past, New Year’s Day was a combination of water, Alka-Seltzer and apologies. It’s not a bad thing that all of that is behind us. Well, most of us.
Some stayed at home, some went to a house party or New Year’s function. Some were designated drivers or took taxis. When the stories don’t involve interactions with police, firefighters or tow truck drivers, they are actually pretty lame.
One of the group said, “It’s just another day, a flip of the calendar page. The days fall one after the other and there really is no start or end to the year.”
What an interesting point of view. Personally, I disagree. My life has to have a start and finish to the year, otherwise nothing would get cleaned or organized.
Just starting a new folder titled January 2015 gives me a feeling of accomplishment and anticipation. I’m ready to go, let’s get things done this year.
I would like to go one step further and have a big ‘delete’ button installed in each home. Wouldn’t it be great at one minute after midnight to push that big do over button and have everything from last year disappear?
There would be no bills to carry over. We would start financially fresh and promise to handle our spending and buying much better this New Year. Imagine if all the stupid things we had said or done during the past year just vanished and people we had wronged or upset would forget about it, and their resentments against us were forgotten?
With a push of the button, any health-related issues from last year are gone. We start with healthy lungs, great blood pressure and lots of lubrication in all our joints. There would be no medications lining our window sills or filling our medicine cabinets. We would go back to that part of our life where we could eat or do anything we wanted to do.
But being human, would we abuse this arrangement, knowing full well that no matter what we did during the year we could push the big button in January and start all over? Or would we learn from our mistakes? Would we eat healthier, would we exercise more, would we invest and save our money, would we be more compassionate and caring to those who mean the most to us?
I’m sure many of you have seen the analogy of each day being a bank of 86,400 seconds. Every morning that amount of time is deposited in our personal ‘bank.’ There are no restrictions, we can spend those seconds any way we want, but they are gone at midnight.
How much have you got from those seconds of time you were given today? Did you waste some or spend them frivolously? Did you start something new, or finish a project? Did you meet someone new or make contact with an old acquaintance, lest they be forgotten?
The analogy suggests that if those seconds were dollars we received every day, knowing we couldn’t carry them over, we would likely pay much more attention as to how we spent them.
You won’t get them back. Invest your time wisely. At least that’s what McGregor says.