Every time you make plans, you roll the dice. We’re going on a cruise next week, something we laid the plans for six months ago. We were literally putting our money on the fact that we would still be alive and healthy enough to travel. The same is true for the plane tickets and house rental we committed to for our annual visit to New Hampshire in early July, as well as all the theater subscriptions we bought for the ’26-’27 season.
Planning is a gamble, at whatever age, but the odds get longer as you age, but I’m sure every one of you can reel off stories about unpredictable circumstances that undid someone’s well-laid plans, regardless of that someone’s age. As in all gambling, you keep winning your bets, but in the end the house always comes out ahead. He/she/it sweeps all the chips into its bag and the game is over.
I’ve probably piled too much on this metaphor to the point of collapse, but you get the idea. Just to stretch it one tiny bit further, if you stop rolling the dice, you’ve already conceded the outcome. I refuse to do that, so we’ll continue as long as our bodies allow us to write into our calendar as many commitments as those little boxes can hold. The end is written, but for the time being we still have a lot to say about how to live our lives between here and there. We’ve planted our garden and anticipate being around to harvest and enjoy its bounty.
That’s all I have for this week and next week is an off week for the blog as our cruise boat floats down the Rhine. I’ll tell you all about it when we get back.
