Not to be overly dramatic about it, but time is running out.
But first, as always, a word from our sponsor:
Here at Top Comments we strive to nourish community by rounding up some of the site's best, funniest, most mojo'd & most informative commentary, and we depend on your help!! If you see a comment by another Kossack that deserves wider recognition, please send it either totopcomments at gmail or to the Top Comments group mailbox by 9:30pm Eastern. Please please please include a few words about why you sent it in as well as your user name (even if you think we know it already :-)), so we can credit you with the find!
Tonight's feature presentation: time is the ultimate luxury
If you have the resources, you can buy the trappings of luxury. If you have the love of family and friends, there can be nothing that compares to the emotional highs and lows that come with that.
But we cannot avoid the inexorable creeping forward of time. It is going to be the downfall of us all, no matter how rich, poor, enriched, or lonely we may be. And so I've come to conclude that there is no luxury more precious, or more fleeting, or more downright enjoyable, than time. You can pass along your things, your possessions, to the next generation, but you can’t pass along time. It gets used, then it’s gone.
I know, I’m some kind of brain wizard, huh? Bet nobody else ever had these thoughts before.
Anyway, the passing of time has been on my mind quite a bit lately. I’m 60 now, retired for about a year or thereabouts, with plenty of leisure time. My partner, though the same age, is going to continue working for a couple more years before hanging up his professional hat.
We aren’t wealthy, just part of the vast (and no doubt shrinking) middle class. We have both had good jobs, decent income, and have some investments put away for our retirement years together. Unlike many, we will be OK. We have had the opportunity to travel to many interesting places, and will continue to do so. Next summer’s big vacation (can you actually go on vacation when you’re retired?) trip is already planned and locked down. But this won’t continue forever.
Both of us can pass for a few years younger than our actual age. We get some of the aches and pains and things that go wrong with the human body after living six decades, me more than him, but overall we’re still in pretty good shape. So we will just continue to make the best of whatever time we have left, hopefully a few decades or so. But however you look at it, we’re already past the halfway point.
Next month, we will be in California, visiting one of Partner’s nephews and his wife, and their now one-year-old twins. We saw them all last year, so this will be our second time with the twins, who were just newborns the first time around.
And that makes me wonder what kind of a world they will have. A world that may see the end of the Summer Olympics in their lifetime, because the cities capable of hosting the games may all be too hot for people to be outdoors.
Or, heaven forbid, President Hair Drumpf could insult Vladimir Putin across from the conference table, and the nukes are launched before he can say “just kidding” to what he thinks is his bestest friend.
Nawww, I have to think it won’t be that dramatic. Partner and I will sail off into a few decades of sunsets toasting to a glass of wine, meeting up here and there with family and friends around the world. We will live the life of luxury ... the luxury of the time that we share.
I leave you tonight with a song. Use your time wisely. It’s the one thing that can’t be saved.
top comments for sunday august 21, 2016
Sometimes it goes like this. Nobody has any nominations they want to send in. It’s that kind of a day.
(Except for two highlighted comments!)
Highlighted by The Idiot:
Is this comment by Court Jester on how Term One should effectively differentiate our nominee from the caricature! It’s a good insight, and it explains a great deal of Republican panic.
Highlighted by planner joe:
Is this comment by wu ming, that analyses some of the differences between the 2006 and 2010 mid-term elections.
top mojo for saturday august 20, 2016
top photos for saturday august 20, 2016