The View From a Different Window: ~They were worth it. Each and every one of them.~

The calendar turned to February today and with it marks the beginning of yet another month in this year of 2015. It's hard to imagine, almost unbelievable to think of at times, just how fast life goes. The age old saying "time waits for no one" is most certainly true and if you think you can slow it down a bit, you will most certainly be proven wrong. The very best that we can do, in fact the only thing, is to live each day to the fullest while we are here on this place called planet Earth.

My 60th birthday will be looking me square in the eyes in exactly 268 days more and although in print that looks like a lot of time to spare, in reality it is not. Early in the fall of 2014, I came up with a list of 60 things that I was determined to do before I turned that wonderful age on my birthday in late October of 2015. Although I have 8 of them done there are 52 more just waiting for me to accomplish. I wonder to myself if I can really do it, actually finish this list before 10:32 in the a.m. on the day of my birth. Time itself will tell the answer.

I never returned back home to Kansas in time to do #23, one that said I'd get back to Wichita and enjoy some very tasty garlic salad at Doc's Steakhouse there. Sadly, about a week or so before I could return there it closed down. It was a great place where I often met friends when I lived in Kansas. So I changed it up a bit and chose to just to never forget the happy memories that dining there provided me. Lots of great stories were told around the table in that place. Funny how sharing a meal with someone can be one of the most therapeutic times in life. Some of the best advice I have ever received was freely given while dividing a bowl of garlic salad onto two plates. It's the little things I remember.

The little things.

#35 on the list is becoming somewhat easier as the days go by. I have found it quite satisfying to simply give things away as I attempt travel more lightly. This business of downsizing is very intriguing to me and the more I realize how much stuff I have, the more I want to let it go. Really, I mean that. Approaching age 60 has brought an awareness to me, one that says it is perfectly fine to not own everything under the sun. I don't want any more and as a matter of fact, I want a whole lot less. I'm not saying by October 26th that Mike and I will be living in a house barren of most everything because I am sure that we will not be. But in the weeks ahead I intend to be thinking of what I can easily part with, extra things that get in the way of really enjoying the life that remains for me here. It's time.

As I'm reading down my list of things just now, I realize that I probably have already taken care of #41. It was my wish to find a really good deal on a rental car for a change. That idea made the list because of all the miles that I had already put on my 2012 Honda. Mike and I seem to travel quite a lot these days and I didn't want to keep putting more additional miles on the car's odometer. We have at times rented a car to make the journey back to Kansas and elsewhere but the costs of doing that are sometimes quite expensive. Just last week I traded my car in for a new one, a vehicle that will probably take us wherever we may need to go for the next foreseeable future. Although I am very thankful for a new vehicle, the memories I made while driving the old one will stay with me for as long as I shall live. That old car took me on a more than 4,000 mile journey to visit my very first lighthouse at Cape Elizabeth, Maine. It took me to the quaint New England village of Owego, New York where I met and made new friends with good people like Kevin and Diana. Perhaps most importantly of all, it took on my first journey over the big mountain they call Monarch and brought me to a new life here along the Western Slopes. Vehicles can play an important part in what happens to you in your life, you know? It happens all of the time.

The next 268 days lie ahead and the important thing to remember is that I am promised none of them. It is with the somber realization that I feel ever more determined to enjoy my life each day and so maybe that is why #59 (Enjoy life. Enjoy life. Enjoy life.) made it to the list in the first place. So for this day, I go forth in faith that whatever happens to me is yet one more part of an ever unfolding "plan". I surely don't understand it always. Shoot, some days I never do.

It's strange how all of the items on my list of 60 things somehow will manage to work together, as they carry the same theme for the remaining days of whatever time I am given. They speak of less in the material sense and much more in the things that all of the money in the world can never buy. Though it has been broken many times, I am glad that God gave me a kind and loving heart, one that has proven to be very expandable. Even when I downsize my material possessions of this world, I never have to get rid of all the memories that I have made. There is room for all that I have acquired as I store them up inside of me.

The even greater thing is that there is room for plenty more.