It's an odd thing the way certain years or even the sound of them rolls off our tongues. It's as if they are meant to have greater meaning than all the others. The year 2012 arrived with a lot of expectations, ruminations and predictions. The year of the dragon, the age of Aquarius, the Apocalypse and Revelation. In other words, the end of all time. Or at least as we know it and perhaps a dawning of a new day. I'm still watching to see if anything majorly different happens out there. In my world, the cat is still demanding, the dog still shedding, and my family is still a lovely, beautiful mess.
2012. It has a nice ring if you ask me. And it's what got me started on a recent adventure of... let's call it goal setting for lack of a better word. I have this habit that some people like which also drives other people (namely my cousin Deb)—crazy. It's planning what I'll be doing three years, five years, ten years down the road. I don't mean what I'll have for dinner but something I would like to accomplish. Something that sets a goal for me on the other side of today and this year. Whether it's reading the Pulitzers, or learning a language or traveling to Machu Picchu. It helps me cast a net forward because as much fun or as painful as looking back might be, there is really only one move any of us can make and that's forward. Because clinging to the past, I mean really clinging to anyone we used to be regardless of the glory of that one bright moment in our history, is a type of death and tragedy. It totally negates our potential as human beings of today. Perhaps it also gives us an excuse not to continue, to grow, to learn, to be better human beings. After all, we reached our Zenith at 18 or 26 or 42—whatever we may consider our shining yesterday to be.
A friend and I were recently discussing this clinging to yesterday plague over a glass of wine. We were discussing people who had been homecoming queen, made the NY Times bestseller list, or had a number one song on the charts. Whatever the circumstances, it was a time where their stars glowed so brightly that all else in their after-life of those moments on Earth paled by comparison. All else. And herein lies the tragedy.
God bless our shining moments, our Cinderella nights, our King of the mountain experiences that we will treasure forever; but life is so much richer than our perception of that value we place on fleeting years. To live fifty years feeling that we are only a shadow of our former selves is a sacrilege to the passion of the passing minutes. This electrifying life is not limited by our brushes with personal fame and celebrity at any age.
Here's an exercise if you will in the collection of moments, in heightened awareness of time. Recently, in that goal setting moment, I was flipping through calendar pages on my iPad. Three years, yes, I can plan to hitch a ride on an air balloon over Albuquerque. Five years? Something involving camels and Egypt, a ride down the Nile in the moonlight. Ten years? Reading a great novel of Spanish Literature—in Spanish. Then an odd thought occurred to me. In this year where the Mayan calendar comes to an end, exactly how far did the Apple iPad calendar reach? Well, I can tell you this much, Steve Jobs' vision for the future was right up there with Buzz Lightyear's because it reaches to infinity and beyond. I stopped turning pages after the year 3000.
It gave me pause with the flipping past every new decade because yes, finally, sooner or later, all vitamins and medical improvements, aside I reached a time when I was no more. Not on this side of the veil anyway. And I've never been one to fear what was on the other side. Yes, in the most childlike way I believe we continue. That this life is something we'll shed with this body, but that on the other side—who really knows until one gets there regardless of how many books may be written on the subject. So the day will come when we cross into the other side of what we believe, whether that be Heaven or nothing but dust but regardless, the pages of the calendar days will keep turning without our being around.
When my father died this was the hardest thing for me to accept. That the world kept spinning. I wanted to scream at people working and walking and eating and breathing—"Don't you know what's happened?! Don't you know that life has changed? That it will never be the same!" But they continued on. And eventually, after grieving and getting through it, so did I. My life, all life, for a little while anyway—continues.
Here we are together, momentary dots on the long and forever calendars of Mayans and Hallmark's, and iPads traveling together through this world until we are no more. Like the Mayans we will walk away from all that is and all that was. And where will the world be without us? How will it go on?
Personally, other than my closest family and friends, I don't think the world will blink an eye or skip a beat when I'm gone. And I'm okay with that. The most bizarre thing that occurred to me though was that Twitter and Facebook would outlast me. That people will still be posting what they had for lunch, and laughing over the latest youtube viral video or announcing their precise location—"I'm downtown at 5th and Broadway." Social media, whatever form it takes or becomes over the next twenty or thirty years will be thriving as I leave this world hopefully with a state of grace.
The silliness of The Bachelor and other 'reality shows' will still be realities. The things perhaps that I might consider mindless, passing fancies or trivial pursuits will outlive me. I don't get to choose what the world will still embrace when I'm gone or what those still breathing will find valuable, beautiful and worthy of their time. The only thing I can do is hold up this cup of days before me, those that still belong to me, and recognize them for what they are.
Golden years. Precious minutes. Priceless moments. All of them.
