What Special Someday Are We Saving For?
My brother-in-law opened the bottom drawer of my sister’s bureau and lifted out a tissue-wrapped package.
“This,” he said, “is not a slip. This is lingerie.”
He discarded the tissue and handed me the slip. It was exquisite: silk, handmade and trimmed with a cobweb of lace. The price tag with an astronomical figure on it was still attached.
“Jan bought this the first time we went to New York, at least eight or nine years ago. She never wore it. She was saving it for a special occasion. Well, I guess this is the occasion.”
He took the slip from me and put it on the bed with the other clothes we were taking to the mortician. His hands lingered on the soft material for a moment. Then he slammed the drawer shut and turned to me.
“Don’t ever save anything for a special occasion. Every day you’re alive is a special occasion.”
I remembered those words through the funeral and the days that followed when I helped him and my niece attend to all the sad chores that follow an unexpected death. I thought about them on the plane returning to California from the Midwestern town where my sister’s family lives. I thought about all the things that she hadn’t seen or heard or done. I thought about the things that she had done without realizing that they were special.
I’m still thinking about his words, and they’ve changed my life. I’m reading more and dusting less. I’m sitting on the deck and admiring the view without fussing about the weeds in the garden. I’m spending more time with my family and friends and less time in committee meetings.
Whenever possible, life should be a pattern of experiences to savor, not endure. I’m trying to recognize these moments now and cherish them.
I’m not “saving” anything; we use our good china and crystal for every special event–such as losing a pound, getting the sink unstopped, the first camellia blossom.
I wear my good blazer to the market if I feel like it. My theory is if I look prosperous, I can shell out $28.49 for a small bag of groceries without wincing.
I’m not saving my good perfume for special parties; clerks in hardware stores and tellers in banks have noses that function as well as my party-going friends.
“Someday” and “one of these days” are fighting a losing battle to stay in my vocabulary. If it’s worth seeing or hearing or doing, I want to see and hear and do it now.
I’m not sure what my sister would have done had she known that she wouldn’t be here for the tomorrow we all take for granted. I think she would have called family members and a few close friends. She might have called a few former friends to apologize and mend fences for past squabbles. I like to think she would have gone out for a Chinese dinner, her favorite food. I’m guessing–I’ll never know.
It’s those little things left undone that would make me angry if I knew that my hours were limited. Angry because I put off seeing good friends whom I was going to get in touch with–someday. Angry because I hadn’t written certain letters that I intended to write–one of these days. Angry and sorry that I didn’t tell my husband and daughter often enough how much I truly love them.
I’m trying very hard not to put off, hold back or save anything that would add laughter and luster to our lives.
And every morning when I open my eyes I tell myself that this is a special occasion.
Ann Wells
Ann Wells penned this story that was featured in the Los Angeles Times in 1985. The column was written a couple of years after her sister unexpectedly died, and several years before she would lose her husband. Here work somehow made its way to the Internet, where it moves by e-mail and chain letters, compliments of the forward button, and has been renamed “A Story to Live By.” Wells a retired secretary and occasional freelancer, was stunned that the essay, first published in The Times has been zipping through cyberspace.
Who will You be Tomorrow?
by Steve Goodier
One man sat at a stop light. The woman in front of him was going through papers on the seat of her car, and when the light changed to green she didn’t go. A green light is not a suggestion, you know, it is more of a commandment. But she didn’t notice.
When the light turned red again, she still had not moved. The man in the car behind her now started screaming epithets and beating on his steering wheel.
A policeman tapped on his windshield.
“You can’t arrest me for hollering in my car,” the man said.
The cop asked for his license and registration, returned to his car, talked on the radio for a while, and finally handed the papers back.
The driver protested, “I knew you couldn’t cite me for yelling in my own car!”
The officer replied, “I didn’t want to cite you for shouting in your car. But I was directly behind you at the light. I saw you screaming and beating your steering wheel, and I said to myself, ‘That man is out of control. He’s going to hurt someone!’
Then I noticed the cross hanging from your rear view mirror, the bright yellow ‘Love Is a Choice’ license tag, the ‘Give Peace a Chance’ and ‘Prayer Changes Things’ bumper stickers, and I was sure you must have stolen the car.”
His behaviour did not reflect his bumper stickers. But let’s not be too critical. Are we always the people we want to be?
We make changes by stretching.
Personal transformation can happen when the person we presently are does not yet resemble the person we hope to be.
Better to set high ideals and occasionally fall short than to settle for mediocrity and succeed.
The important question is not, “Who are you today?” It is better to ask, “Who will you be tomorrow?”
Remember: if nothing ever changed, there’d be no butterflies.
Steve Goodier’s books & Newsletter:
FOLLOWING YOUR BLISS
Who was it that said, “Follow your dream – unless it’s the one where
you’re at work in your underwear during a fire drill.”?
Author Joseph Campbell’s advice was to “follow your bliss.”
American painter Grandma Moses did that. She actually started painting at age 76, after arthritis forced her to give up embroidery. “If I hadn’t started painting, I would have raised chickens,” she once said.
And I heard of a bus driver in Chicago who followed his bliss with some surprising results. He sings while he drives. That’s right…sings. And I don’t mean he sings softly to himself, either. He sings so that the whole bus can hear. All day long he drives and sings. He was once interviewed on Chicago television. He said that he is not actually a bus driver. “I’m a professional singer,” he asserted.
“I only drive the bus to get a captive audience every single day.”
His “bliss” is not driving a bus, though that may be a source of enjoyment for some people. His bliss is singing. And the supervisors at the Chicago Transit Authority are perfectly happy about the whole arrangement. People actually let other buses pass by so they can ride with the “singing bus driver.” They love it.
Here is a man who believes he knows why he was put here on earth.
For him, it is to make people happy. And the more he sings, the more people he makes happy. He has found a way to align his purpose in living with his occupation. By following his bliss, he is actually living the kind of life he believes he was meant to live.
Are you following your bliss?
When you do, you may discover that you are experiencing the kind of life you feel you were meant to live.
And what’s more, you will be happy.
– Steve Goodier
http://stevegoodier.blogspot.com/
