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movie. They’re afraid they’ll miss the best part.
    Do the math. If we’re in our forties now and are lucky enough to have the genes to make it to our eighties, our lives are already half spent. We should be savoring these days, hours, minutes, even seconds, not sleeping through them. Who wants to oversleep and wake up just in time to hear, ‘‘Your life will be closing in ten minutes. Please take all your purchases to the nearest counter and exit through the main doors on your left’’?
    Life’s too important to snooze our way through it. There’s too much to do, too much to see, too much to be a part of. If the food processor they’re featuring on that 3:00 A.M. infomercial really does dice, slice, chop, mince, puree, and provide therapeutic counseling for my vegetables, I want to know about it. If there’s a store open twenty-four hours within a ten-mile radius of my house, I’m going to be out there in the wee hours of the morning supporting it. After all, the people working in the twenty-four-hour Wal-Marts and Kmarts, all-night restaurants, and gas stations are no doubt just like us. They’re trying to stretch every moment they’ve got left, too. I think ‘‘Attention Kmart shoppers’’ has a subliminal message. It’s a code for ‘‘Life’s too short. Stop and smell the roses . . . in our Garden Center at the rear of the store, for $12.98 a dozen.’’
    Time is going to steadily tick by—ticktock, ticktock—and there’s nothing we can do to stop it or slow it down. If we’re going to live this life to its fullest, and if we’re going to do the work that God has for us to do, we need to do it now, not later—today, not tomorrow. After all, we don’t want to get to the pearly gates and have to stand before God and say, ‘‘Sorry, Lord, I was sleeping. Can you tell me what it was I missed?’’

    The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.
—Anonymous

11

Making Memories, Not Regrets
    My mother dreamed her whole life of going to Washington, D.C. Almost every summer my family traveled from our home in California to Arkansas, where my grandparents lived. One of those summers we probably could have driven up to Washington, D.C., and fulfilled her lifelong dream, but we never did. For whatever reason (no doubt financial), she denied herself that pleasure.
    When my father passed away, the one regret I had was that I had not taken him on more trips. So after his death, I made a vow to myself that my mother would see Washington, D.C. Fulfilling that dream didn’t come easy. I had to save the money, make adjustments to my work schedule, book all the necessary flights and hotels, and—hardest of all—get Mother to agree to the vacation. She thought she couldn’t take that much time off work. I tried to convince her that she could, but when that didn’t work, I called her boss and arranged for her to have the time off, then basically ‘‘kidnapped’’ her.
    We had a wonderful time visiting the White House, the Capitol, the FBI headquarters, Arlington Cemetery, the Smithsonian, and just about everything else there is to see there. And although the trip took some extra effort and planning, it was well worth it. The pictures and memories I have of our time together are irreplaceable.
    After that trip, I planned as many weekend jaunts with my mom to as many different places as I could. These trips quickly became a highlight of both our lives.
    A few years ago I decided to fulfill one of my own lifelong dreams. I had always wanted to see the Indian dwellings at Mesa Verde, Colorado. Using the same strategy I had used with my mother, I decided I was going to make it happen. I would create my own memories instead of waiting for them to come to me. I saved the money, made the arrangements, and soon my family and I were standing among Indian ruins. Seeing those dwellings gave me a sense of completeness. Once again I had made a memory instead of a