Month of Gratitude, Day 8: Time and grey hair

I'm grateful for time.   For, as the card says:

It sure does.  It flies by in an instant.  (Although, in an odd paradox, there are some bad moments in life that can feel longer than an entire year flying by that you don't even remember much about.)

  

Yesterday, we gained an hour.  Not so very happy with the fact that sunset this afternoon will therefore be at 4:41 p.m. . . . and will be getting earlier and earlier until December 21.  

However, totally thrilled by the idea of the "extra hour."  Oh, the possibilities!  

. . . start a new art project . . .  catch up on bookkeeping. . . take a walk with your dog and your camera . . . make spaghetti sauce . . . read the book you're loving . . . throw in a load of laundry and scrub the bathtub . . . catch up on your friends' blogs . . . send that thank you card to your grown-up son . . . sit down and really listen to your favorite radio show with someone you love . . . have coffee with a friend you haven't seen forever . . .. . . make marketing phone calls . . . write your congresswoman . . . work in the garden . . . take a nap . . . .     

And that is just what you can think of doing, off the top of your head:

which is frosted, like a birthday cake, with grey hairs.  For which I am totally grateful.  

Because, as you can probably tell from my "oh-boy-an-extra-hour!" list, I am pretty obsessed with time and the opportunities it presents to be, and to do.  (Or even not-to-do.)  

This comes from the curse-and-blessing (which is how curses usually go, if you're given enough time to recover from them) of losing many loved ones at pretty young ages -- both theirs, and mine.  When I was in my early 20s, I lost my most favorite, wonderful grandpa.  And then, my mom.  Within a year-and-a-half of each other.  (It was about 100 miles past awful.)  That was followed too soon by a miscarriage, and by the passing of my younger half-brother, who always felt more like my own kid than he did a sibling.

Why am I telling you this?  Definitely not for sympathy, because I know that every one of us has his own great heartaches and difficulties.  And there's nothing so very special about mine.  And, as you already know from just the past seven days of gratitude, I've got a gigantic boatload of things for which to be grateful.

I'm telling you this because I have a fervent hope that everyone will realize how precious each day is.  Even the days that suck.  The blessing you receive when you lose people early is the knowledge in your bones that days -- time -- matter.  And when you find yourself living past the ages that your folks were when they passed, you salute your grey hairs and wrinkles . . . because they mean that you are here, and have been here, living all the days that you've been given.

So, go outside right now and take note!  (Here's my outside:)

 

Look at this day you've got.  Wow.  Now, what are you going to do with it?!?!  Because.  It. Matters.

Here's what some pretty cool folks said many years ago about how they liked to spend their time:

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) wrote, "I sound my barbaric yawp from the rooftops of the world."  

Emile Zola (1840-1902) wrote, "I am here to live out loud."  

(These were some pretty darned bean-up-the-nose spirited dudes.)  

Please live out loud.  Please sound your barbaric yawps.  I firmly believe that the world needs everyone to participate as themselves.  Every day.  Otherwise, why would we have been given this time?  

Thanks, time.  Thanks, grey hairs.  YOU ROCK.