...Because tomorrow is not a given.

We met up with some friends over the weekend. They have just bought a camper van and are having a wonderful time carrying their home from home with them on their travels. They have taken it everywhere. They took it to the local beach the other day. It poured with rain, so they made themselves a cup of tea and sat, each reading a book and occasionally looking out at the rain and commenting on how dry, warm and cosy they were in their van.

Over dinner I asked them about it. They said that they had bought the van because of the empty spaces in their wedding photos. I was intrigued. They said that one day they had been looking at their old wedding photos from thirty years ago and had been struck by how many of the people in the photos weren’t there anymore; they had died. Not just the people from the older generation, but people younger than themselves. They had been saving up for a new kitchen, but now they said, “Blow it. Let’s have some fun while we still can. Let’s buy a camper van.” It was something they had often thought about but put off for later. Now, they realised, was the time, because later might not come.

Another young friend of mine was asking my advice. She has received an invitation to visit a friend in New Zealand and was wondering if she should go. 

“It’s not a good use of money,” she said. She is saving up as hard as she can to buy a place of her own. 

“Go. “I replied. “Go now. You have the money, and you have the time, and you have no responsibilities. Don’t be like me: I have always wanted to go to New Zealand, yet here I am at 62 and I still haven’t done it.”

I don’t know if she will go but I hope she does.

We put off so much, thinking we will do it later. It might be next year, or the year after, or the year after that. And somehow the year after that never happens and it becomes too late. I saw some years ago, an advert for cheap tickets to Europe. It featured two elderly people talking over a cup of tea. “Do you remember that time we nearly went to Warsaw?” I thought that was both sad and a good advert.

There are so many things I still want to do. We can afford to do them, we have our health, and we could arrange the time off to do them, yet we’re waiting for retirement. But retirement is three years away and there’s no guarantee that we will still be healthy enough to travel or do those things. Or even still be here at all.

What are you putting off for later? Could you do it now? If not, why not? Don’t leave it too late.

Mary 

A Moodscope member