Hello, Goodbye

I am listening to Pavarotti sing and working on a variety of projects both personal and professional when suddenly I am hit by this thought:

One day you'll wake up and someone important will be gone from your life forever.
Telephone calls, texting, email, Facebook, blogging and every other form of communication not called memory will be useless.
What will you do when that happens.

It is not the first time that I have thought about this but today it hits me harder than normal. That is probably because it is the first Passover without some of the more important people in my life. It is not unexpected or surprising and I have always known that this would be coming.

But it is another reminder to me that time is short and that we have a limited window of opportunity to do certain things with friends and family.

Since this is a time of year in which we do a bit of spring cleaning it is also a time when I sit down and look at the physical and mental things in my life. I look at what I own in both places and try to figure out how to reduce the clutter.

I look for the things that just take up space and try to eliminate them. The physical stuff is really easy. It doesn't take more than a moment to decide whether something deserves to be carried around for another year.

But the mental side, well that isn't always as clear cut. That is where I look at the promises I have made and who I have made them to so that I can try to decide if things have changed.

I probably should clarify and say that I don't focus on everything, just the stuff that jumps out at me. These are things that for a variety of reasons demand my attention.

Relatively few things capture my attention in this way. Over time I have become quite adept at limiting that which requires my eye but those who do, well they do it.

So What


So what is the question that I pose after I acknowledge their presence. It is what I say when I think about whether they deserve my attention and the energy I have devoted to them. Not everything does and sometimes it is easy to just let go.

But those others, well I don't always let go when I see a reason not to. Sometimes that is because I see opportunity and value that isn't worth throwing away. Sometimes I see reasons why it makes sense to hang on a bit longer.

But there comes a time to say goodbye to everything and the question that you have to ask is what happens then. What happens when you aren't given the opportunity to reconsider decisions. What happens when you realize that you made a mistake and you want to try to fix it but can't because they are gone.

Sometimes life is more complex than we might like it to be.

P.S. some of my best stuff can be found over here.