“I recently read about an elderly man who, in an attempt to remind himself to live more consciously, filled a bowl with tiny stones that he counted out to represent the number of days he imagined he might still have left to live. In good health at seventy three, he thought if his luck held fast, he could perhaps reach ninety; to expect more years than that didn’t seem realistic. And so he multiplied 17 by 365, and placed 6,375 small pieces of gravel in the bowl. Each evening before bed, he carries one of the stones outside and drops it in his driveway, pausing a moment to consider the truth of his mortality, the fact that his days are numbered – although, of course, the actual number left to him remains a mystery. Sometimes, returning his stone to the ground at his feet, he mourns the slow, steady subtraction of days; other evenings, he sifts the remaining stones through his fingers and is suffused with gratitude for all that are still left. But either way, he is aware: Each day is precious, singular, and irretrievable. And one of them will be his last. One night, the man’s wife confessed that every once in a while, she picks up a stone from the driveway and returns it to his bowl, giving him back a day. The ritual has made them both more conscious – of all that we can never know, and also of the one and only thing we know for sure: This life passes away.”
From Magical Journey, by
Katrina Kenison
What reminds you to live more consciously?
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