Mid Life Celebration

Yesterday, you heard a promise.  Here it is, the traditions a mid life Father put in place, using a lion’s share of midlife creativity.  It would be easy to discount their value, because they are so simple.

1. Bear Hug
2. One, two, three
3. Twistee Treat Day
4. Food For Families
5. Dinner Prayer
6. You’ll never get in trouble for being honest
7. If you lined up all the boys in the world….

What simple, repeatable traditions do is ingrain key messages.  Simple messages.  Life altering messages.

While we are insanely busy, we all have one life to live. We ought to be insanely thankful for that, and then set out to make the most of it.

PS.  If you regularly follow Mid Life Celebration, you already know there’s a really strong chance each tradition will be explained in future posts, maybe as soon as tomorrow.  And if f you’re new here, welcome.

“Tomorrow is always the busiest day of the year”. — Jonathon Lazear

Ain’t it the truth?  At least that’s the way it feels.  Why?

You may feel differently.  But for me, it seems like tomorrow is “the day” that, “I’ll finally be able to catch up with things“.  So I race hard to get so much done.

Time marches on and there is simply more to take the place of that which has been done.  Ever heard the phrase, “busy beaver“?  Beavers work hard every day, repairing their dam, fixing their den, looking for food, etc.  Seems there is always lots of work to do.

What’s the solution?  If I knew that, tomorrow would be looking like a vacation day, eh?

Mid Life Crisis?  Mid Life Celebration?

Two choices.  Maybe there are more, but it only seems like two that are obvious.

So if you had a choice, which would you pick?

No brainer, eh?

Yep, no brainer.  Then why are so many unhappy?

Because life is hard.  Sometimes, it even feels impossible.

“You no longer spend your life hurrying around the corner for something which is never there”. — Rex Harrison

If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times.  There is no guarantee in life, except that we will die.

There seems to be a delicate balance between hurrying and not hurrying. We shouldn’t rush blindly through life, bypassing life’s simple pleasures.

But then again, we can’t spend too much time doing what pleases us, because in the end, there really is much work to be done.  Our: mind, body, spirit, money, community, job, sleep, errands, chores, etc.

If we take our cue from nature, animals are constantly trying to survive. There is always the threat of danger lurking somewhere.  In nature the saying goes, “Survival of the fittest”. I’m not talking physically, I’m talking comprehensively.

Ya with me, comprehensively.  This means your day will be really busy. Or not.

“The day is of infinite length for him who knows how to appreciate and use it”. — Goerthe

In our younger years, most of us had the luxury of not having overwhelming schedules.  Being bored was common.  And we dreamed of an exciting life.

Careful what you wish for, especially if you don’t read the fine print, “Exciting, as in overwhelmingly busy; insanely busy”.

I hung an old-fashioned wooden sign on our dining room wall which reads:

“The meaning of life is to learn how to enjoy the passage of time”.