Your Last CD

“Without knowing it, one day you burned your last CD.” –Internet Meme

 It’s true! I don’t remember the last one. 

Come to think of it, I have other examples like this: like dialing my last number on a rotary phone or opening that last car door with a key. 

It’s strange how commonplace features of life suddenly disappear. 

When I was a teenager, phones were attached to a wall. A private call was restricted to the length of the receiver cord. No one had a computer; answers to questions were found in libraries. The windows in Dad’s car were manually cranked up and down. There was no such thing as intermittent windshield wipers. 

The science fiction fantasies of my youth are now mundane, like wristwatch phones, video calls, and artificial intelligence. Such changes seemed to happen gradually and then all at once. 

We miss the changes right under our noses, perhaps because we walk backward into the future, blinded by the belief that things will continue as they are. I remember carrying our kids to bed when they fell asleep watching TV in the family room. This went on for years; it seemed endless at the time, especially when I was tired. I don’t remember the very last time I did that. The youngest is now 38. 

We never know when we will do something for the last time.

Perspective determines our realities, and therein lies the catch… we acquire our perspective from the past. When I turned 50, Dad looked at me and said, “It seems like I should be the one turning fifty.” Next week, I turn 70. I assumed that reaching that age would take more time.

Change often comes in two flavors: those we don’t notice and those we can’t bear to accept. Our eldest son’s health is in precipitous decline; I try to ignore that trend. It’s best to be fearless when facing the future. 

“Yippe kia-yay, motherf***er.”-Bruce Willis

Ferris Bueller offers the best practical advice when it comes to change: 

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

I don’t remember burning that last CD or rotary dialing that last phone call because those things weren’t that important. What seems important in the hustle and bustle of life can turn out to be unimportant; it’s the little things, like kindness and each other, that we cherish.

There’s a message in the opening meme: Nothing lasts for long. It doesn’t seem that way, but life proves the point. Every moment presents a choice of what to give our attention to, which is worth considering because, in the end, relationships are what we remember. 

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Installments of The Secret Within can be found here. 

Former blog posts can be found here by subject category and here chronologically. 

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My first book, Towards A Life Well-Lived, can be purchased by clicking this link. Proceeds from sales are donated to Peace In Schools, a Portland, Oregon-based organization that supports mindfulness training in high schools.