If you ask 100 people this question,
“What was the best day of your life?”
There are regular life answers.
The day I met my husband/wife.
My wedding day!
The day that my daughter/son was born.
The day that my granddaughter/grandson was born.
The day we adopted our son/daughter.
When we closed escrow on our new house.
When I was on <game show> and won <prize>.
When I met <fill in name of person>.
The day I won the lottery.
There are religious answers
The day I accepted Jesus.
The day I was baptized.
The day I celebrated my first communion.
The day of my bar/bat mitzvah.
If I had a list . . .
§ Six off the regular life list
§ Two off the religious answers list
Junior High.
§ Setting two school records (one is still the record) in track and field.
§ Pitching a perfect game in Pony League.
High School
§ Helping the football team win its first league game after going 0-39.
§ Being named co-valedictorian
Teaching Career
§ Co-Teacher of the Year for San Diego County
§ California’s winner of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science
Teaching
Teaching
§ Having former students travel from as far as Chicago to come to my
retirement party in San Diego.
I have one outlier. The day my granddaughter was released from NICU after spending 60 days inside.
retirement party in San Diego.
I have one outlier. The day my granddaughter was released from NICU after spending 60 days inside.
Your answer may or may not be on any of these lists. There are scores of other possible answers.
Those are all excellent answers.
They are worth remembering.
But, are they really the best day of someone’s life?
For some people that is the case as far as their life experience goes. Those are the best days of their lives.
I feel sorry for those people.
Don't get me wrong. Look at the two sentences in red above.
I rejoice with each person who shares those memories with me.
I’ve experienced nearly all of those days.
I don’t think that any one of them has been the best day of my life.
There’s a bumper sticker I’ve seen many times. It’s some iteration these posters attributed to Bil Keane.
Hold that thought.
How do you answer this question?
“How you doing?”
My most frequent response is, “I’m doing well.”
“I’m doing good” implies you are serving others in some way; “doing well” makes it personal.
I’m trying to train myself to change my answer.
I want to say, “Best day of my life!”
I know what some of you are thinking.
WAIT! Didn’t you say that you’d experienced many of the first list days? How can today be the best? You don’t know what’s going to happen!”
It doesn’t matter what happens.
Today is the only day I have. It’s the only day you have.
Consecutive todays are what we call life, what Bil Keane calls a present.
When we live our last today, our life on Earth is over.
No matter where you are . . .
No matter what you do for a living . . .
No matter how much or how little money you have . . .
If you are powerful, in prison, or a slave . . .
You have 24-hours in today as your present.
That’s 60-minutes, 1,440-seconds.
Once a second passes, it’s not yours anymore. You will never get a chance to live it over.
I am not a philosopher. I avoided taking philosophy at SDSU by choosing the Bachelor of Science and not the Bachelor of Arts degree.
I write stories in which people travel along the fabric of time. One time-travel aficionado had this to say about my time travel mechanism.
“Time is described as a fabric which consists of interweaving threads and which can fold over itself. Time can also be considered as a pool, which suffers ripples. Such imagery is used fully and allows for some wonderful reasoning behind why (and how) characters travel in time. It's one of the best descriptors of time that I've read and is definitely the high point of this collection!” Paul Wandason on TimeTravelNexus.com.
That’s all imaginary.
Remember, we each get one shot
at each second of our lives.
Earlier in this post, I admonished you to hold your thought about Bil Keane’s saying.
It’s time to tell you why.
As of the day I'm writing this, I've lived over 68.5 years. I'm into my 25,o32 day to be more precise.
I remember a lot of my “history,” although not as much as I used to. Many of you reading this are key pieces in that history.
I have hopes and plans for my “mystery.” Not only for me, but for my wife, sons, and granddaughters.
I vow to live my “gift from God” to the best of my ability each day.
Vowing to do something is far easier than doing that thing.
I'm still working on making "The Best Day of My Life" the answer to "How are you doing?"
However, this is my prayer
God, grant me the insight and discernment to do my best for You as I live each present you give me!
This is the day Yahweh has made.
Let’s rejoice and be glad today!
Let’s rejoice and be glad today!
Psalm 118:24 Names of God Bible (NOG)
The next Almanac is two weeks from today.
I'd appreciate your feedback on Blogger!.
Right on target for me too! Remembering the "gifts" of past days are wonderful, but I don't want to lose the joy in today's gift by focusing on what was or what may be. With that in mind, I'm purposing to answer "Blessed!"
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