Summer has flown. Back-to-school commercials are on TV, kids are heading off to college, and sooner than later the school bus will drive by with the neighbor’s children every morning at 8:07 and cause my dog Andy to bark furiously (I won’t mind; he’s 14 1/2 and every day with him is a gift).
Someone famous whose name I can’t remember said, “After you turn 50, seems like every 15 minutes is breakfast.” Whoever it was, was right — the days are flying. I’ll be performing at my Vanderbilt University reunion this year and while I’m thrilled with the opportunity, I’m shocked at the number — my 30th reunion. Hard to wrap my head around that.
I’m determined to slow the month of August down as best I can, before the hubbub and the chill of the fall begin, and I guess the best way I can do that is to slow myself down. And I can do what Joan Didion suggests below, which a friend posted this week on Facebook — enjoy.
“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.” ~ Joan Didion
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