FORTY Schmorty! Life keeps happening

MATTIE: Happy New Year!! What a great holiday this was! Check out our Forty Schmorty New Years Podcast! We had so much fun but it’s sad to see it all end.

EVE: I was driving around downtown San Diego at night on New Years Day and noticed all the Christmas lights were still up. Of course they were, it was a holiday and no one’s working! So starting tomorrow everything comes down. It made me a little melancholy.

MATTIE: You should come over my house and enjoy my neighbors lights! We’re already 7 days into January and the lights are on every night. I have to admit they did a great job on the decorations but I hope they come down before Easter!
EVE: Everything pertaining to this holiday season has taken me a lot longer to complete. My Christmas tree was up for 2 weeks before my family finished decorating it and it took us 2 days to break it down and drop it off at the tree recycling place. Now I’m sitting here with all my Christmas decorations on my kitchen table ready to be packed away for another year and I can’t believe how quickly it all flew by. I feel like by the time I was ready to get into the Christmas spirit, it was over. Am I getting old?? Or am I just sleep deprived??
MATTIE: No, you’re not getting old, you’re getting better! And do I have to remind you of your crazy busy schedule for the month of December 2007!
EVE: I’m so hopeful for this new year of 2008! I’ve started walking more and making healthier choices with my food and I already feel better. I am so excited to see what the world has in store for all of us Forty Schmorty’s!! Let’s make it a year of change full of positive affirmations and focus on building better relationship with loved ones and ourselves. G.K. Chesterton has a great quote: “The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.”
MATTIE: I’m very excited for the new year!! Check out this Chinese Proverb: “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of a candle will never be shortened. Happiness never ceases by being shared. I’m revved up and ready to go for 2008!

MATTIE: Hey Eve, have you ever heard of that poem that’s been going around the internet pertaining to a eulogy read at a funeral for a woman who had passed away?

EVE: I haven’t heard it.

MATTIE: Well it starts off with the dates of the day she was born and the day she died. What was read was how she spent her “dash years.” You know the dash in between the beginning and the end of her life?

EVE: An interesting phrase for a persons entire life.

MATTIE: It really got me thinking about my own dash. You know what?

EVE: What?

MATTIE: I choose to live my dash to the fullest, one dash at a time! It might even look like this one day “—————” What do you think?

EVE: Ah yes! You nailed it! There is only one way to find out what your dash looks like.

MATTIE: Here, see for yourself:

THE DASH

©1996 Linda Ellis

I read of a man who stood up to speak at the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on her tombstone from the beginning to the end.He noted that first came her date of birth and spoke the following date with tears. But said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years. For that dash represents all the time that she had spent alive on the earth. And now only those who loved her know what that little line is worth. For it matters not how much we own, the cars, the house, the cash — What matters most is how we live and love and how we spend our dash. So think about it long and hard . . . are there things you’d like to change? For you never know how much time is left that can still be rearranged. If we could just slow down enough to consider what is true and real, And try to understand the way other people feel. Be less quick to anger and show appreciation more, And love the people in our lives like we’ve never loved them before. Treat each other with respect and more often wear a smile, Remembering this special dash might only last a while. So when your eulogy is being read, with your life’s actions to rehash, Would you be proud of the things they say, about how you spent your dash?