Every moment matters

An old lady watched a young boy whiling away a summer day and sighed.

"You're wasting golden moments," she told him. "And someday, you'll wish you had them back."

From her perspective, nearer the end than the beginning, life is a succession of moments, some good, some bad, but all important and extremely precious.

We learn that as we age, like wine in a cask. Where once we soaked up the sun, never thinking it would set, we come to know our days are numbered and how many we spent on things of little consequence.

If not this week, maybe the next. If not this year, the year after. What the heck.

Because time is cheap when you're 12 or 20. Tomorrow always comes like clockwork. The present has no value and the future is like money at the mint, they're always making more.

Unkind gesture

Recently, I saw a woman in the parking lot of a supermarket scream at a man who had pulled out in front of her as she tried to leave.

It looked like the end of a bad day for both parties involved. He reacted quite naturally, deflecting her attack with an unkind gesture.

The incident took only a few moments, but both left in a huff, dragging anger behind them like an anchor.

Not far away, two teenage boys sat on a curb, waiting for a ride, smoking cigarettes, killing time.

Inside the store, a young couple argued over the price of disposable diapers. Around the corner, a middle-age man stared at an endless row of cereal boxes.

At the checkout, a harried housewife stopped to read a magazine cover about Lindsay Lohan.

Ten minutes of seven lives they'll never get back.

Worth living

Not that we should or could spend every waking hour of our time on important, meaningful and earth-shaking stuff.

It's just that we need to learn to enjoy ourselves, laugh more often, make mental notes of small, insignificant things, remember words to songs, sing them, take a walk, talk to each other, acknowledge old friends, make new ones, stay up a little later, tell someone you love them, watch an old movie, help an old lady across the street, or choose not to run another red light.

If we simply think about what we're thinking about, allow other people to be right sometime, give somebody else some elbow room, notice a bird on a wire -- when he flies away, where he goes -- and try to figure out why.

Read more columns by Ken Burger

This is what makes life worth living, and why you won't regret it when it's over.

Reach Ken Burger at kburger@postandcourier.com or 937-5598 or follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Ken_Burger.