With a bit of sleight of hand a magician can make you ask, “Where’d it go?” But as you get a little older, you don’t need a magician to cause you to say, “Where’d it go?” Instead, you just need to set something down for a moment and poof! It’s gone! Then you say, “Where’d it go?”
Later — sometimes much later — it will be discovered and it’s a 50/50 chance as to whether you will remember what you were trying to do originally.
There is another occasion when you might say, “Where’d it go?” That’s when time has slipped away, not on a daily scale, not even on a monthly scale, but more of an awareness of how short of a span of active living remains for us. It’s a realization that time has passed and it’s important to get after those things you said you were ‘gonna do’ some day.
I have a few ‘I’m Gonna’s’ or IG’s that have gathered a bit of dust. One IG I have is to travel with a trailer across the United States. That is going to need some re-vitalizing. It’s not a bad ‘IG.’ Another is to get the yard organized. That is going to require a template of some kind. As soon as I can see it, I can work on it. I guess I’m a visual kind of person. But those are on my IG list.
It’s good to look at your IG’s and dust them off and give them a little air. Let them breathe a little life back into what the future holds. Maybe I need to move forward with the yard template and, as the movie, “What About Bob?”suggest, perhaps use “baby steps.”
At this point, I have to ask, “What do you have on your ‘I’m Gonna’ list?” Is it in this roster of common ‘I’m Gonna’ items? Travel to far flung places; spend time with family; visit National Parks; get a new car; renovate the house; travel with the college football team to their away games; go watch your favorite baseball team in spring training practices; spend more time making the yard the envy of the neighborhood.
The danger of asking about your IG list too late in life is that you may not have the money or the physical ability to make it happen and that idea dries up like an autumn leaf and drifts away. Life happens, and I’m sure if money was needed for hospital care or treatment, then sacrificing an item or 10 on the ‘I’m gonna’ list won’t be a regret.
But let’s dwell on the items on the list. They need your attention — now! It’s time to review them. And if you haven’t written them down, do it now. If you have that list, dust it off and let those IG’s breathe. Revisit them and get reacquainted. Yep, maybe it’s time to give them a spot on the calendar. Maybe this year’s calendar, or perhaps next year’s calendar. Give them a spot on one calendar nonetheless, so you don’t lose IG items to the drip, drip, drip of the faucet of time. You can make progress getting things set up to make this a reality, ‘Baby Steps.’
Rather than getting stuck in the doldrums of life, start making those ‘I’m Gonna’s’ into a reality. Then as time marches on, you will be pleased with the dwindling IG’s and the growing stack of memories. And best of all, regarding time, you’ll be less likely to wonder, “Where’d it go?
