A Lifetime to Remember

 

"Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once." Lillian Dickson, American missionary (1901-1983)

The TV announcers were analyzing the losing team's limited options in the closing minutes of the football game. One announcer commented how the coach could just as easily choose correctly and leave the field a victor, or make a wrong decision and go down to defeat. "Three minutes to play, but a lifetime to remember it," he said. "Whichever way it goes."

As we step into 2018, we can look at life much like those announcers looked at the end of that football game. We'll have a lifetime to remember our 2018 decisions and their consequences.

Every day of the New Year will present decisions to be made. Some will be easy, even automatic. Yet, we'll struggle with other decisions we face, like the football coach with only three minutes left to play.
We make our marks through life with a ballpoint pen, not with a pencil. No eraser is big enough to rub out life's mistakes.

But I've read regret is the silent killer of the soul. Dwelling on past mistakes or mistreatment from others serves no good purpose.

The driver who always looks backward in his rear view mirror doesn't do a very good job of driving ahead. Once done can't usually be undone; words spoken can never be taken back.

Care is necessary in the performance of our words and actions. The Golden Rule provides an appropriate road map to help us bypass many regretful mistakes: Treat other people the way we'd want them to treat us. And let us not forget the cleansing effect of a sincere apology when necessary.

The New Year offers a clean slate, a new beginning. It's our chance to start a fresh record. But we don't have to wait until each January to decide to turn over a new leaf.

Not just every New Year, but every new day is like flipping to a clean piece of notebook paper. The empty lines are waiting to be filled. What we do each day turns the blank lines into another chapter in the story of our lives.

What kind of reading material are you creating? Would some chapters be more worthy than others? Would you want to acknowledge you'd written some chapters, but not others? Are they of Nobel-prize quality?

It's up to us what we do with each New Year, each new day. Would our life's story claim a prominent spot on the bookstore's shelves? Or would it barely earn space in the lower, right hand corner?

Yes, we will have a lifetime to remember our every day. Here's hoping all our memories get better and better. May each day of 2018 be a happy one! With few regrets.