Three shot glasses

I'm betting we all have certain rituals or habits that we build our days around.  Things we do to remind ourselves of what we need to do and things we do that make it easier to remember where we are in the day.  And things that are just plain habits.

For instance, I always set up the next morning's coffee the day before - well, almost always. Occasionally I wonder what that smell is and why there's no coffee in the pot just in time to realize that yesterday didn't go quite as planned!

Another ritual involves three shot glasses:

Yup, shot glasses - commonly used as illustrated above as vessels for alcohol.  However,that's not what I use them for.  I used to think that I was using them as a depository for the various vitamins and calcium and cranberry pills and so forth that I take every morning.  Put the pills in them three days at a time and then all you have to do is take them and not fiddle around with them every day.

Recently I realized that actually those three glasses are counting down my life.

It dawned on me that I was filling them up every time I turned around - or at least that's what it seemed like.  How can they already be empty?  Didn't I just put the pills in them?  Has it really been three whole days?  But...but....it's only been......yeah, three days.

How could that be?  What have I done in these past three days that let them slip by practically unnoticed.

#did laundry

#walked the dog

#shipped my brother and his wife a DVD

#is that all I can remember?

My mother used to ask me what I had done on any given day to "justify my existence".  I rarely had an answer but I was left with a lifelong feeling that every day I had to do something worthwhile or else I hadn't, in fact, justified my existence!

My point this time now that I'm finally rolling around to getting to it is that life just passes by.  You fill up three pill containers (thank goodness I don't use those ones with seven sections so you do a week at a time) and, voila!  they are empty again and three days of your life have vanished.

It's not particularly original of me to say we all need to pay attention as our life unrolls - more eloquent writers than I have put it many different ways to probably greater effect.  They've said things like "stop and smell the roses" and "don't blink or you'll miss it".

So all I'm saying is pay attention - you don't actually have to do something momentous to "justify your existence" on any given day - but do something.  Make the phone call to a friend, let someone go ahead of you in line, finally send that e mail you've been promising you would send....your choice.

I'm betting there is something that you can do today that'll make it a day you will notice before it's in the rear view!