Today is the last day the sun will set after 6:00 PM until next March. That is a depressing little fact to start a Wednesday morning, but we will Gloria Gaynor for another day.
This is my favorite time of year. The morning alarm goes off with the temperature hovering around 49 degrees, and by the time the afternoon rolls around, we are flirting with 70. The kind of weather that makes you want to sit outside with an Old Style and watch the world go by.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature is about to pull the shades down before dinner.
Today also happens to be Back to the Future Day. On October 21, 2015, Marty McFly arrived from 1985 in his flying DeLorean, expecting hoverboards, flying cars, and a world that looked nothing like the one he left behind.
Eleven years later, we are still sitting in traffic, arguing with our phones, and waiting for Elon to invent a decent flying car.
I have often wondered what I would do if Doc Brown pulled up in front of my house and offered me a ride back through time.
There are definitely a few dates I'd like to revisit. A handful of conversations I would manage differently. Some decisions I would reconsider, and a couple of people I would tell to go pound sand.
…And maybe a few people I'd hold onto a little longer.
But here is the problem with rearranging yesterday. You never know what you are going to erase from tomorrow.
Change one decision, take one different turn, walk through one different door, and the three Shepkids never come into my life.
That is a price I am not willing to pay.
Besides, knowing my luck, I would end up tending bar in the French Quarter, drinking my profits, telling the same stories to tourists, and spending forty years promising myself I would finish that first book.
Come to think of it, that doesn't sound entirely terrible, but I would miss the Shepkids.
…And that brings me to today's Chalkboard.
"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."
We spend an awful lot of time thinking about the big decisions that shape our lives. The marriages, the jobs, the mistakes, the roads we took and the ones we didn't, but it is the little things that matter just as much.
Holding a door for someone who looks like our ma. Buying the tired dad behind you in line a cup of coffee. Calling an old friend who has a loved one in the hospital. Giving someone the benefit of the doubt when they are having a horse shit day.
I hammer this one constantly. You never know what somebody else is carrying around, and you just never know when an act of kindness might change the direction of somebody's afternoon.
We cannot climb into a DeLorean and fix yesterday, and we sure as hell don't know what tomorrow has planned, but we can do something about today.
Be kind.
Do good stuff.
Don't be a jagoff.
It isn’t hard to do...
…And unlike time travel, it doesn't require 1.21 gigawatts.
The sun has a smile until six o’clock. Grab a friend, grab a cocktail, point your lounge chair west, feel the astonishment, and share the gusto.
