4000 WEEKS

4000 weeks. I thought about what I read. You get an average of 4,000 weeks in your life. Suddenly I felt like I wanted to collect all the remaining weeks and hold them tightly. The realization came that now is the time to skimp, not waste the days. I have to open each week's envelope with devotion and peer down into the white, smooth envelope that I tore open curiously. Another week, what, what does it contain?!

But life doesn't come with any guarantees. The conditions are as different as our personalities and the possibilities are not even measurable. We are all born with infinite possibilities.

What would I tell my younger self? How would I phrase the life advice so she would stop and listen? 4000 weeks feels endless when you are young. And now, when I realize that I may have 1 to 1300 weeks left, I suddenly become aware of how quickly time flies. How fleeting life is and how grateful I am to have come this far.

Is it time to slow down and just devote yourself to gratitude? Or go to a monastery and grow herbs and raise money for the world's sorrows?

How do I take advantage of the obvious treasure I still think I have in my arms? I still have my arms full of time. And the whole soul full of hope and joy.

How do I tell my young self that she will fall many times in her weeks of life and just as many times she will rise again. Sometimes it counts as both 8 and 9 but at 9.5 she will come back with staggered steps and beating heart.

How do I tell her that she will make many mistakes but even more successful steps forward where she will be happy. How do I formulate my wish for her to always look forward and rarely look back?

And how do I tell her that it is extra important that she listen to her ability to see things that others don't? That she follows her gut, her sixth sense.

Dare I reveal to her that even though she thinks she's following her gut and her sixth sense, her logical, practical, hopeful, and future-loving side can take over and make a pancake out of it all, and that it takes not just weeks, but years to heal and move on?

Can I tell my little girl sitting on my shoulder that all love is not real and that there are people who want to live in her energy and power and joy of life and when they have generously received everything - they recklessly step over her - where she lies empty as a shell - like she had no lower value? How many weeks does she have left then out of the 4000? How many weeks can it be worth betting wrong?

The weekly stack is shrinking.

Some weeks feel like trudging straight into the arms of the sun; the heat, the light, all the ingredients are there to live here and now. How many weeks of the 4000 can you get in the arms of the sun? And do you appreciate the embrace of the sun if you get too many of the good, lovely, loving weeks? Don't you have to have some black, tangled, long boring and rainy weeks in your life to appreciate the bright ones? How do you tell your young self that it has to hurt a little to do good? And why does it have to be that way? Are there people who walk around in the sun all the time?

Can you gas the plate in the carpet for the last 1000 weeks so that there is a balance? Most old people on their deathbed have no regrets. They are satisfied. They have used their weeks well and got a nice balance between rain and sun.

So the question is this beautiful Thursday; We live if we are lucky, just over 4000 weeks. How do we make life as good as we can while we are alive?

Love m.