Letters to Marge (Chapter 4): Make No Wasted Moments

Greetings, Margaret…

As I write this, I am five days late from greeting you a Happy First New Year! You are running through the eighth month of your young and smiling life right now…

And to illustrate how beautiful, but fleeting life is. I would like to share with you a lovely video I stumbled upon online:


http://eirikso.com/2008/12/27/one-year-worth-of-images-give-some-amazing-videos/

Which brings me to this entry’s lesson: MAKE NO WASTED MOMENTS

Life is short enough as it is. Assuming you will live a life of reasonable health, you may live to see around ninety years. But for most fast-paced lifestyles that involve Quarter-Pounders with Cheese, instant noodles, foods with ingredient lists as long as half a page of the phone book, radioactive appliances and a lot of other dangerous things, some things prop up by the mid-fifties. Things like tumors, high blood sugar, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow, or whatever it is that may be killing yours truly right now… err… there’s quite a bit, but let’s move on…

I originally intended to tell you to “enjoy every minute of your life as much as you can.” But looking back through my own life, I can’t honestly say I enjoyed every moment. At this point, I won’t really change a single thing from my past. But having said that, every so often I take stock of what has made me what I’ve become. And in most cases, I can remember something that happened that shaped how I would face the things that came my way.

Of course, some moments were simply passing through, but even they meant something. Probably a breather of sorts, little moments when I catch my breath and take a quick look around me. But simply put, good memories are kept to be enjoyed over and over. The not-so-good ones are there for us to learn from.

When you try something and fail. Don’t think for a moment you wasted your time. But hold on to that failure and study the many ways you can avoid it in the future.

I’ve always believed that every single person’s life is a full life depending on what we choose to see, to hear, to feel and to keep for the rest of the time that we have remaining on this earth.

In a nutshell, your time can only be wasted if you either don’t enjoy it, or don’t learn anything from it. But always know that time only moves forward, so make every moment count in even the tiniest ways.

Love,

Dad