The Future is Closer Than You Think.

      Last night I had the privilege to attend the retirement reception of  a close friend and co-worker Dennis Scharpf. As I sat listening to stories of people who had known him longer than me, I realized that the future both he and I had always talked about was here, at least for him. The time when work would not be the dominating theme of life, when vacation days would be like all other days, except perhaps for the change of venue, and the time would come, where even time would not have to be considered as frequently. One of his already retired friends pointed out that day light savings time would be starting this weekend, but hey, who really cares.
     I also realized this was the first of these functions I had attended where I was in the same age bracket as the person being honored. Yikes!
     It had been pointed out to me fairly recently that the time I have left to live, even from a very optimistic point of view, is less, perhaps much less, than the time I have spent getting to this point. This point in life, where somebody said we begin counting back from the end rather than counting forward from the beginning.
     So the future is closer than I thought.
     Really this is just a figment of my imagination. The future has always been right where it is, the next second, the next minute, the next tick of whatever clock.
    Here during Lent, we have set a countdown to the future, who will we be at the end of this countdown?
40 days (and Sundays) sounds like a long time, but it will go by in a flash. We will be living April 11 2011 in just 30 sunrises, 30 more sleeps, 20 more working days or 4 more TGIF's.
Many of us have spent our days looking forward that we have missed the now. One thing we can do during this 40 days(and Sundays) is to spend the now doing what is important now.
     My friend Dennis, the new retiree, looked to the future, but lived in the now. He always has the latest gizmo, and I have even been present when he ordered pie at lunch, to eat BEFORE, his burger came. I think that's how it should be.
     Life is short, enjoy it now, don't wait, eat your pie first.
Peace my Friends.