Monday, April 05, 2010

Living Largly

One objective that I've been putting off for weeks is completing our taxes. I finished them up over the weekend and took them to our accountant today. It's a good feeling getting that off my plate.
I ran by Jasper Seed and Feed and picked up cracked corn for the chickens and a sack of dog food. I walked through the plant section and saw a tray of heirloom tomato plants.  I snagged them up along with some eggplant seedlings. Jilda makes killer eggplant "palmer-gener" so a season without fresh eggplant is a waste as far as I'm concerned.
I ran back by 4 Seasons Garden Center and picked up a blueberry bush to replace the one that didn't make it through last season.
As I wandered around looking at all the tools, fountains, and plants it occurred to me that the retirement thing is finally sinking in. I wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere.
It's amazing how much life you miss by being in a hurry. The thing about it is, you often arrive at your destination at the same time whether you meander or rush, but the journey is never as enjoyable.
I'm listening to a book today called "Drive". It's a book about what motivates people. This afternoon as I drove home, the author said something interesting.
He said that anyone these days who lives to be 60 years old has a very good chance of living until they are over 80 years old. 
If that is true, Jilda and I stand a very good chance of living another twenty or twenty-five years. 
The author went on to say that when people reach 60 they tend to look back at when they were 35 and it strikes them how quickly that time passed. They then often do soul searching to figure out how to best spend the remaining years of their lives. How to do something meaningful.
I've spent a great deal of time the last few weeks doing just that. I CAN do a lot of things, but I think my time would be better spent deciding on how to get the most life out of the rest of my life.  
Regret is a waste of time, but I have wondered what I could have accomplished had I done a better job when I was younger, focusing on how to live more largly.


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