A dear friend for­warded me this story about mar­bles, which I’ll share in its entirety. The gist is that each of us gen­er­ally starts with about 3900 of them.

The older I get, the more I enjoy Sat­ur­day morn­ings. Per­haps it’s the quiet soli­tude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not hav­ing to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Sat­ur­day morn­ing are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuf­fling toward the garage with a steam­ing cup of cof­fee in one hand and the morn­ing paper in the other. What began as a typ­i­cal Sat­ur­day morn­ing turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it:

I turned the dial up into the phone por­tion of the band on my ham radio in order to lis­ten to a Sat­ur­day morn­ing swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sound­ing chap, with a tremen­dous sig­nal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broad­cast­ing busi­ness. He was telling whom-ever he was talk­ing with some­thing about “a thou­sand mar­bles.” I was intrigued and stopped to lis­ten to what he had to say–

“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your fam­ily so much. Hard to believe a young fel­low should have to work sixty or sev­enty hours a week to make ends meet. It’s too bad you missed your daughter’s “dance recital” he continued.”Let me tell you some­thing that has helped me keep my own pri­or­i­ties.” And that’s when he began to explain his the­ory of a “thou­sand marbles.“

“You see, I sat down one day and did a lit­tle arith­metic. The aver­age per­son lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on aver­age, folks live about seventy-five years.“

“Now then, I mul­ti­plied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which is the num­ber of Sat­ur­days that the aver­age per­son has in their entire life­time. Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m get­ting to the impor­tant part.It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail”, he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hun­dred Saturdays.“

“I got to think­ing that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thou­sand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every sin­gle mar­ble they had. I ended up hav­ing to visit three toy stores to round up 1000 mar­bles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plas­tic con­tainer right here in the shack next to my gear.“

“Every Sat­ur­day since then, I have taken one mar­ble out and thrown it away. I found that by watch­ing the mar­bles dimin­ish, I focused more on the really impor­tant things in life. There is noth­ing like watch­ing your time here on this earth run out to help get your pri­or­i­ties straight .“

“Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for break­fast. This morn­ing, I took the very last mar­ble out of the con­tainer. I fig­ure that if I make it until next Sat­ur­day then I have been given a lit­tle extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a lit­tle more time.“

“It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your fam­ily, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!“

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fel­low signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morn­ing, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.

Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. “

C’mon honey, I’m tak­ing you and the kids to breakfast.”“What brought this on?” she asked with a smile.

“Oh, noth­ing spe­cial, it’s just been a long time since we spent a Sat­ur­day together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out? I need to buy some mar­bles.“

Posted on August 4th, 2010 by Sky
Filed under: Spirituality