Jill Thomas is a rambler, traveler, and storyteller with a big laugh who believes life takes her where she needs to go, no matter the roundabout path.
This week while rambling, I've been ruminating on lasts, taking an inventory of sorts.
A while back, Jane Witherspoon, shared a Mindful Musing describing how experiencing firsts makes the passing of time feel slower. Time is a rubbery thing, seemingly constricting when we're enveloped in the familiar and expanding when we experience something new.
The correlation between time's elasticity and how our brain processes new experiences may be why time seems to turn up the tempo as we age. Our firsts become fewer and further in between.
As babies, our days are crowded with firsts—our first breath, meal, hug, words, and steps. And as we grow up, they keep on accumulating - the first day of school, our first best friend (Dale Jensen), the first novel we read by ourselves (Trumpeter of the Swan), the first class we fail (Typing).
The momentum of firsts continues into our early adult lives—our first job (McDonald's), our first cup of coffee and cigarette (Robyn Watson), the first time we dance in a nightclub (Cheryl Larson), the first time we have sex and fall in love (not the same person), and our first heartbreak (Mark Rutherford).
I remember my daughter's excitement the first time she was in a huge, exuberant crowd. We were in Vancouver, in the street, when the Canadian men's hockey team won the gold against the USA in the 2010 Olympics. She'd never felt that kind of energy and was joyfully beside herself. I felt the same thing for the first time when the Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992.
These days, my life has more lasts than firsts, and so many of them are entirely innocuous. What is so fascinating about these lasts is that when I was doing them, I had no idea they were lasts. I'm sure there are thousands of lasts I don't even remember.
Innocuous lasts are more fun to think about than the tragic lasts. Yet even in these, there's a little sadness because they remind me how much the world has changed in what feels to me like so little time (was 2000 really 23 years ago?!).
Do you remember the last time you stuffed a dime into a pay phone or a floppy disc into a computer?
Were you cognizant of when it was the last time you rented a video, heard the squeal of dial-up internet, stood up to change a TV channel, looked up a number in a phone book, searched for a factoid in an encyclopedia, scanned the newspaper classifieds or looked up a library book in a card catalog?
There wasn't a moment while I was flipping the cassette tape in my Sony Walkman that I thought to myself this is the last time I will ever do this. Yet I must have done it a last time.
If I had, would I have paused to give the moment some poignancy?
For me, these innocuous lasts, and thousands more passed without notice or a second thought. It makes me think, what did I do today for the last time?
Tell us some of your innocuous lasts in the comments!
READ MORE > JT's Tales From The Trail, Rambler Cafe Blog
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