Yesterday, what with driving between my home and my office, I travelled 23,294,400 kilometres. It was one heck of a trip. I will tell you about it in a moment.
I was talking to the Business Warriors on Tuesday night, trying to get perspective on the anxieties most of us carry with us. Mostly regarding money.
Christmas is a harrowing money time for many self-employed people. No bonus, clients away for half the month, income is halved,… You get the point. But life isn’t just about money.
Life is a mystical wonder we share. We are each just a seven-billionth of humanity, which in turn is but a tiny speck in the vastness of the cosmos.
Here we are, you and I, stuck on the surface of this Earth, rotating at 1600 km/h. Our planet is circling the sun at 107,000 km/h. We are circling a star wondering through the Milky Way at 70,000 km/h. While our galaxy is winding its way around the universe at 792,000 km/h. That adds up to 970,600 km/h, depending on whether you’re going east or west on the freeway, or stuck in traffic.
It made me think about how we get so lost in this issue of tiny bits of money. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about small bits or big amounts. The principle is the same. Creditors chase you equally enthusiastically.
We lose all of the enjoyment in this one life we get, worrying about a very small facet of that life: money. We have this fine break looming. We can waste it worrying about something that we cannot change before the end of the month. Or we can treat it as a fait accompli, this year, and change our habits next year to avoid repeating it. Better to have some fun with the people we love and who love us. Unlike debt, they might not be here come December 2015.
January will look after itself. As long as Earth does not collide with another speck of the cosmos between now and then. Wouldn’t it be such a waste to have not enjoyed this Christmas?
I am going to have a white Christmas, as dreamt of by Bing Crosby. He forgot to mention that “white” usually comes with “cold”. Just south of Oslo it will be about -10 degrees cold. While you are sitting at your pool humming some Crosby, Castle in hand, feet in water, with the fine sizzle of medium-rare beef wafting past, I will be zipped into my orange down-filled parka, sitting at my desk dreaming of your pool. A white Christmas is not often compatible with a pool.
Is life interesting or what?