1768 MARBLES


2009 is peeking and I can see its pretty little head round the corner. No, I'm not about to make my resolutions... can't even remember the last time I did that. I mean, I don't need to make new year's resolutions. I make them everyday, on the realm of weight management and all that hogwash.

I can't place where I read it from off the top of my head but it's got something to do with every Saturday that we still have left for the rest of our lives and thinking about how we choose to spend it or who to spend it with or how to feel about the day. People have bought marbles, enough to mark every Saturday and put them all in a jar and they take away one marble for every Saturday spent. Those who have gone on in years can actually see the marbles dwindle down to a few handful and there's one I've read who was actually writing his story with the last marble in the jar. Not that he was dying that day but I think there's something about the days breezing by and the time ebbing away becoming so visual that sort of makes one want to take stock and really think about what is most important in one's life and what form one wants it to take... from then onwards.

Why Saturdays? I don't know. It's probably because it's a given that we would work the rest of the week and Sundays are like the day before the start of the week so plans are basically left to a minimum, or to the upkeep of the house or stuff like that. So the way I see it, Saturdays are our personal days, the day of the week that can be left open for choices and presumably the one by which we can sculpt the rest of our life. This may be me romanticizing the whole thing but until someone can convince me of a more pragmatic and believable point of view, then this is it for me.

Saturday... do I spend it with my loved one or do I spend it at work? If I spend it with a loved one, how will I choose it to go? Will we be off somewhere and experience another one of the many firsts together or stay home and cuddle in front of the TV and hit the munchies? And if I have no choice but to be at work, how do I choose to feel about it, how do I make it a pleasant thing or something to look forward to? Either way, how do I make the day meaningful, what can I do so that I grow some from whatever choices I make for that single day?

So yeah, I think I'm going to do the marble for a Saturday thing. At Church last weekend, Pastor Rick said that statistics say that the average lifespan of someone who lives in southern California is now 78 years. That gives me 34 years before I hit the mark and with 52 weeks in a year, that's 1768 Saturdays... and 1768 marbles. That's not a whole lot when I look at the number in the backdrop of a lifetime. I want to see how I can make it worth more than that. You know, like making the parts amount to more than the whole, mathematically or otherwise.

I'm going to start buying my marbles next Friday, after a 6-day run at work... can't tomorrow cause I'm working. Oh, by the way, that also means 1768 blog entries.

Can I blog until I'm 78 years old? Watch me.