Marbles

I saw this story on the internet once... 

My friend Dwight Bain sent me a story of a ham radio operator who overheard an older gentleman giving advice to a younger man. 

“It’s a shame you have to be away from home and family so much,” he said. “Let me tell you something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities. You see, one day I sat down and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about 75 years. Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and came up with 3,900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in his lifetime. 

“It took me until I was 55 years old to think about this in any detail,” he continued, “and by that time I had lived through over 2,800 Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be 75, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy.” 

He went on to explain that he bought 1,000 marbles and put them in a clear plastic container in his favorite work area at home. “Every Saturday since then,” he said, “I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There’s nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.” 

Then the older gentleman finished, “Now let me tell you one last thought before I sign off and take my lovely wife out to breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday, then I have been given a little extra time. 

We can’t choose whether we will get any more time, but we can choose what we do with it.

I always loved that story, and I thought it was a great idea. One of the many times that we separated to try to let him figure out what he wanted in his life, I did the math, and figured out how many Saturdays he had left until he turned 75... I bought that many marbles and put them into a big bucket- the only thing I could find big enough to hold them. I left them on his doorstep, with this story. I hoped that he would think about how much time he was wasting, trying to over think everything, and trying to wait until everything was perfect, instead of just embracing life and love here in the moment and being willing to work for it...

I also made myself a bucket of marbles. I am 5 years older than he is, and I had surprisingly fewer marbles than he did. Mine fit in a large, glass fish bowl. I keep them on my bookshelf, and every Saturday I take one out.

For a while, I was saving them. Numbering them, thinking that someday I could look back at each marble and say, "Here's what was happening in our lives when I took this one out..." But after a while, that seemed dumb, and I stopped doing it. I started just throwing them away, like the man in the story. I thought that was more symbolic. The time is gone. I can't get it back... Then, when he asked me to give him another chance, and we got back together, I started placing the marbles out in the garden, by the flower that Dr. D gave me. 

But, like he always said, I have to learn to let go of the past. I can't keep holding on to the marbles of weeks past and keep looking at them and wishing about them. I have to accept that the time is gone and it isn't coming back, and move on...