27,375

   Those of you who follow my writing with some degree of regularity will know that for some reason I have become fixated on age and time. Yes. I am getting older, as we all do, living each day, just one day at a time. That appears to be the way the system works. But what I have come to discover and understand with a bit more clarity is that it is not necessarily how many days we live but how we live each day.

   Like many of you, I am going to assume, I get a number of posts on my Facebook page about living each day to the fullest. I do not know how or why they appear as they do. I can usually count on several of these posts to appear throughout the day. Sometimes they make sense. It depends upon the time of the day or the type of day I am having. Sometimes they seem a bit silly. But the ones that seem to apply to my state of mind at that particular moment can be a bit scary. Is my computer looking over my should. Can it read my mind? Does it know what I am thinking because I have just been perusing the pages of Amazon, looking at items I don’t really need?

   At this moment, for example, the following popped up on my screen…” Stop thinking about the limitations and start thinking about the possibilities.” Ok. Where did that come from?

   Many of the posts focus on the present and the future and credit the past to nothing more than the opportunity to learn from your mistakes. I believe that reflecting on the past can serve as a guide for the future but can also be a storehouse for many enjoyable memories and experiences that make us the person we are on this particular day. And yes, there will be both good ones and bad ones.

   Each new day is the next entry into what will become “a yesterday” and how we live today, what we think about, what we do, how we act and what we accomplish will be logged into another day of life’s experiences.

   The past few weeks, months and years have given us a great deal to think about. It has been a life quite different than I experienced growing up in the 50s and 60s.

   Gasoline at the local gas station was about 25 cents a gallon, until they would have a gasoline war and then the price might drop to 17 cents. Many stores and businesses were closed on Sundays so that family members could go to church together and then maybe spend some quality time enjoying family time together. A haircut was $1.25 and a bottle of coke was 10 cents.

   If I needed to get across town, I could go to the corner and pick up the neighborhood bus and within a couple of minutes be at my friend’s house where his mom had just baked some cookie and with a glass of milk we would be set for the afternoon to watch the black and white tv and sing along with Howdy Doody. And if we were really lucky, we might even go to the local movie theater to see a Disney movie.

   If I needed to make a phone call I would find the nearest phone booth, drop a quarter into the slot and dial the number, not by pushing buttons but by using a dial. I made a lot of mistakes dialing numbers back then.

   Schools were vastly different back then also. No computers. Pencils, pens and yellow or white paper with blue lines were how we communicated. And I felt very safe going to school, although every once and awhile we would have what were called air raid drills where we would hid under the desk in case there was an air attack by some foreign country.

   As each day passed life changed. The price of gasoline went up. Today’s price $4.59. Food at the grocery store became more expensive. One grapefruit is currently $1.23.   And shows on television and at the movies have become more violent and sometimes downright scary.  So what does all this mean?

   27,375 is the number of days I have been alive and the likelihood of living for another 27,375 is not going to happen. But during that time I used each ‘yesterday experience’ to prepare for ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow.’ Our world, as it exists today, is presenting us with some challenging times. But as we have done in the past, if we learn from our past mistakes, failures and successes we can get through these challenging times.

   And about the computer being able to read my mind???

    

  

Pull Up a Seat at the Table

 

   I recently attended a granddaughter’s high school graduation. As has been tradition for many years now, there were the usual speeches and student recognitions. In this particular ceremony the class valedictorian and salutatorian each spoke about their experiences at school and thanked the teachers and other personnel who supported their educational journey. Their themes for the speeches were pretty traditional, but the young lady who gave the valedictorian speech had a somewhat interesting observation about her time in school and what gave here the support she found in order to be successful.

   As she explained, when she was a 9th grade student she did not know many of her classmates, had a limited number of friends and found the transition from middle school to high school rather scary. It was difficult to meet new people and make friends in a large high school as everyone seemed to go about their own business, pass you by in the hallways as you moved from classroom to classroom and did not have a great deal of time to meet and talk with others. But then there was lunch time.

   Entering a cafeteria with many other students, most she did not know, was, I am sure a challenge and maybe a bit scary. High school can be scary in many ways.  But taking a chance, she found an empty seat at one of the tables and sat down, not knowing any of the other students sitting at the table. But as she found out, they basically did not know each other either, something they all had in common.

   As each day passed, they would meet at the same table each day and over time they became good friends, got to know each other well, shared their life experiences in high school together and before long it was time to say goodbye and good luck on this day of graduation. This friendship all began by the simple act of sitting down at a table with others and beginning to share life and what it has to offer.

   Now it was my understanding that the purpose of a table, generally a simple piece of furniture found in most houses, was to be used as a place to eat meals rather than eating off of one of those tv trays, maybe a place to do your homework, or a place to drop your books and coat when you got home from school. But her experience with a table at school was much more than that. For her and the others it was a place to build relationships.

   Thinking about the concept of a table as she described it, there are some new things I have observed about tables and how they are used that I may have not considered in the past.

   If you take a look at some of the more important meeting in the world today, the participants are sitting around a table sharing thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. Everyone’s status at the table is equal and this type of interaction can help lead to compromise, agreement and newfound successes. And let’s not forget about gaining ‘respect” for the others. When sitting around a table, it is difficult to not look directly at someone, to see their expressions and reactions. It sure is better than trying to conduct a meeting over the telephone, or the newest approach, something called zoom!

   After listing to her comments and observations about the table, I thought back over my career and life in general and realized that something as simple a table, even a picnic table, can provide and play an important role in learning about other and learning about yourself.

   I can remember during my career, one of my supervisors, when meeting with him in his office, would always get up from behind his desk and we would sit at a small table in his office. While the content and topics of discussion often covered a variety of subjects, the outcomes were general very positive and productive. Were there disagreements? Of course. But being able to sit down at a table and talk them out was far better than getting a nasty email, a voice message on the phone or an edict from behind that big old desk. (And besides, there was always a bowl of chocolate on the table.)

   Tables have been used for centuries for many different purposes, holiday dinners, birthday parties, playing scrabble or other board game. But their real purpose may have been overlooked and I applaud the young lady and her reflection in her comments about the value of table and the roll it can play in growing up and learning about who you are and the others around you.