Day 23,659: The Days of My Life

It is so interesting to have a personal calendar. We spend most of our lives living by a common Roman calendar not of our own making. By that calendar, today is January 29, 2018.  It is a communal calendar by which we all agree we’re in the first month of the first quarter of this new year.

Then, there is the Hebrew calendar. By that calendar, today is 12 Shevat in the year of 5778. The Hebrew calendar is more than 3,000, closer to 4,000 years older than the Roman calendar, but we have given up the old for the new. On this day, according to teachings, we are to study the passages of Exodus 18:13-18:23.  The Hebrew calendar is more than a communal calendar; also a communal call to study and possibly discuss the meaning of the passages we have studied.

In my personal calendar this is day 23,659 of my life in my 65th year.  It is a relatively young calendar, although 23,000 of anything seems like quite a body of work. It makes me pause to relish how far I’ve come and how much time has been put into being me. Even if I have been asleep, my body has been working on me, so it’s possible to say that I have spent 567,816 hours becoming the me I am today.

It will take more hours for me to be the me I’ll be tomorrow.  The changes will be imperceptible to me, but I will acknowledge that they will be going on nevertheless. When you consider all the work that has already gone into becoming me, it seems I shouldn’t be so overwhelmed by the work I still have to do.  I’m building on a large foundation.

Will this knowledge help me be better at putting only good food into my body, being less critical of my outwardly appearance, or be more tolerant of myself overall?  Of course, only time will tell, but at least I have new perspective on the time it might take versus the time already put in.  It is not a case of putting more good money after bad. In fact, it’s a case of putting in better time to build on good time already put forward. That’s the value of having my new personal calendar.