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Shelf Life
My daughter was given a lovely red leather bound sketchbook by her boss, a souvenir of his recent trip to Spain. He knew she kept a book with daily entries and drawings and felt this was the perfect gift for her. I so hope she uses it and doesn’t save it for some special more deserving later point in time. I have always had a forward looking temperament, one that is preparing and planning and setting aside for the future. I have a fear of making hasty decisions and carelessly squandering anything. The downside of this nature is that too often the saved items are never used, never enjoyed - never have a life beyond their ‘newness’. They sit on the shelf, awaiting some more appropriate, more worthy moment. Over the years, we sent my Father’s Mother nightgowns and housecoats that she kept folded in tissue in their original gift boxes, occasionally pulling them out to look at, forever feeling that they were too ‘nice’ to wear, to potentially wrinkle, to possibly soil, to taint with life. It was as if donning them would deflower them. My other Grandma told me a story of setting choice parts of her dinner on the edge of her plate to savor at the end and lord over siblings who had eaten all of theirs first - only to see those treats snatched away by a sister, devoured and gone forever - the downside of hoarding. My husband Mike and I felt that way about ‘retirement’. We watched older friends and relatives save up ambitions and wishes for after they retired. By the time they did, they were too aged or tired or gripped with illnesses to embrace those dreams with the zest with with they had been envisioned. In many cases they had not done the necessary ground work to facilitate switching over to dream pastimes at that later age. So we decided to live as if we were retired now, doing what we truly liked - living scrupulously and sparsely so that we didn’t NEED a large financial support system for our lives. There was never ‘when we retire’ we’ll take up photography, paint, write a novel, garden or ‘when we strike it rich’ we’ll live in the country, travel, build a bigger house. We didn’t need a large chunk of money or time to pursue those goals we saw on the horizon. We live on that horizon. We told ourselves “it’s not getting what you want, but wanting what you have” that’s the key and if you don’t have it now –do you really want it? I think most of us do what we want to and if we put off things, maybe we don’t truly want them all that much, and if we put them off too often, or for too long, our desires wilt. So lest your ambitions fade - or be snatched away - live them now. 
I so hope my daughter’s new leather journal becomes filled with her life and not shelf life.
My daughter was given a lovely red leather bound sketchbook by her boss, a souvenir of his recent trip to Spain. He knew she kept a book with daily entries and drawings and felt this was the perfect gift for her. I so hope she uses it and doesn’t save it for some special more deserving later point in time. I have always had a forward looking temperament, one that is preparing and planning and setting aside for the future. I have a fear of making hasty decisions and carelessly squandering anything. The downside of this nature is that too often the saved items are never used, never enjoyed - never have a life beyond their ‘newness’. They sit on the shelf, awaiting some more appropriate, more worthy moment. Over the years, we sent my Father’s Mother nightgowns and housecoats that she kept folded in tissue in their original gift boxes, occasionally pulling them out to look at, forever feeling that they were too ‘nice’ to wear, to potentially wrinkle, to possibly soil, to taint with life. It was as if donning them would deflower them. My other Grandma told me a story of setting choice parts of her dinner on the edge of her plate to savor at the end and lord over siblings who had eaten all of theirs first - only to see those treats snatched away by a sister, devoured and gone forever - the downside of hoarding. My husband Mike and I felt that way about ‘retirement’. We watched older friends and relatives save up ambitions and wishes for after they retired. By the time they did, they were too aged or tired or gripped with illnesses to embrace those dreams with the zest with with they had been envisioned. In many cases they had not done the necessary ground work to facilitate switching over to dream pastimes at that later age. So we decided to live as if we were retired now, doing what we truly liked - living scrupulously and sparsely so that we didn’t NEED a large financial support system for our lives. There was never ‘when we retire’ we’ll take up photography, paint, write a novel, garden or ‘when we strike it rich’ we’ll live in the country, travel, build a bigger house. We didn’t need a large chunk of money or time to pursue those goals we saw on the horizon. We live on that horizon. We told ourselves “it’s not getting what you want, but wanting what you have” that’s the key and if you don’t have it now –do you really want it? I think most of us do what we want to and if we put off things, maybe we don’t truly want them all that much, and if we put them off too often, or for too long, our desires wilt. So lest your ambitions fade - or be snatched away - live them now. 
Connie, you are right, all efforts must be made to fulfill one's desires as fast as one could, for one doesn't know if there would be another tommorow
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