Monday Morning Motivator: IT'S TODAY AGAIN!

IT'S TODAY AGAIN!

There was a very cute guy whom I dated a hundred years ago at Yale Drama School, who walked into class one sunny morning and said apropos of absolutely nothing, "Oh look! It's today again!" We all looked at him like he was crazy. In fact, he was sort of crazy which was part of his charm - both on stage and off. He had a lot of positive energy and the kind of élan that was contagious. Still, I, like a lot of the other students, was too busy worrying about learning lines, taking exams and the BIG worry that preoccupied just about everybody: figuring out how the heck to get "invited back" for the second year.

(The criteria were purposely ambiguous and you could drive yourself nuts thinking about it.) So somebody who came dashing in with the irrelevant announcement that it was "today again" (whatever that meant) made us look at each other and roll our eyes.

But it's funny, all these decades later, the "announcement" by that crazy, delightful guy popped into my head and actually hit me hard. I think it's because I heard someone remark on a news broadcast recently that conventional wisdom dictates that we all have, on average, 27,375 days to live. That's a pretty sobering "fact" isn't it? Actually, I plan on living a whole lot more days than that – you probably do, too - but that's not the point. The point is to stop taking a single "today" for granted. (I'm a little worried about how many of them - like the average Monday - I've thought of as simply a day to get through...on the way to Tuesday.) The point is to treat every single one of them as precious, as worth getting excited about, as worth celebrating...maybe even worth getting a little silly over.

And here's another point: If we don'tlike "today" we should change it. If we're not passionate about what we're doing "today," we should change it. If we're not proud of "today," we should change it. I mean 27,375 days can go by in a twinkling, right?

"What day is it?" Pooh asked Piglet. "It's today," squeaked Piglet. "My favorite day," said Pooh. AA Milne; Winnie the Pooh.

I'm sorry I made fun of that cute guy. If I can remember his name I'll tell him so.