SCRABBLE: When Is ‘THEN’?
“We’re gonna have a good time THEN.”
That is one of the lines from Harry Chapin’s song, Cat’s In The Cradle. Bottom line, for many of us, THEN never comes or comes way too late after we’ve missed a whole lot.
And yet, it’s not as though the time between ‘then’ and ‘now’ was simply void. We chose to fill it with other things that seemed so more important at the time. And maybe those other things were our priority way back when. We did choose to do them and spend our time that way instead of some other alternative ways.
We all are the sum total of our experiences and our choices. There’s no going back. Time travels in one direction, as far as we know. Maybe there are time machines that allow redoes. We see them in science fiction. (I remember when I was 6 years old, in 1948, when Captain Video could talk to others by speaking into his wristwatch; unimaginable; who were they kidding? only science fiction.)
I meet people who find me on the internet and call me, telling me that they are interested in playing club scrabble. Many of them tell me that “I’ll do it THEN”: “I’ll begin attending: “When I am ready” or “When I learn the 2-Letter-Words” or “Next week.” 99% of them never appear. 99% of them are hit by the streetcar that runs down the center of the 405 Freeway. (You get the point.)
Life can work that way. We rarely do anything we put off until THEN. Years’ ago, a cousin-in-law and her husband were hard working school teachers. They saved every extra penny, lived very frugally, worked side jobs, and denied themselves vacations and the frills. They dreamt of retirement when they would purchase a luxury motorhome and travel from sea to shining sea. Before their work life reached retirement, at age 48, my cousin Nori developed breast cancer and died soon thereafter. She never got to THEN.
I’ve had my share of THENs. But now I work hard at not putting things off. The problem for living on this other side of the coin is that many times there are not enough hours in the day. Every day is filled with so many thoughts and ideas; every day offers opportunities to choose from so many different projects. When I find myself excited by an idea, I jump into the doing of it. When I am into a project I become very impatient, staying up late nights and rising up early each morning, working, working toward completion.
Currently I am consumed by ‘CONSOGRAMS’. My friend and Club #350 member, Amnon Meyers, uses this study method successfully. This learning system is based on learning words in relation to the family of consonants in each word. As I am developing learning tools for myself and others to use with this approach; each question solved begs another question. To date I’ve worked only a week’s worth of days and am only up to ‘G’. I know that the stopper that leads to incompletions, for me and many others, is setting the project down and thinking, “I’ll get back to it THEN.” So, I’ll keep on keeping on until the project is finished. Watch for a finished project in about 30 days.
What are you putting off until THEN?