As a child, I remember learning to “save” things, particularly clothes. You’d go out to do your back-to-school shopping, bring it home, de-tag everything and run it through the wash (I actually remember soaking my indigo jeans in a bathtub of cold water to get the first run of dye and starch off them before my mother would allow them anywhere near her washing machine!), and then — not wear them until school started. New things were meant to be savored and preserved, so they were more special.
Well, that sort of thinking has its place, to be sure and I’m not necessarily against it.
But I have often “saved” things so long that they went bad before I really got the enjoyment of using them. For instance, one Christmas I received a (to my way of thinking) fancy tin of French cookies. I wanted to make them last, so I rarely ate them, although they were soooooo delicious. You know what happened, don’t you? They went stale before I finished them.
Divas, it’s time to put a sharp stop to this sort of foolishness. Life is far, far too short to not enjoy the joys that are placed along our way. And it is incumbent upon us to peel our eyes and really look for those joys – every single day.
To that end, I’ve started making a quick sketch at the end of each day of a little joy that I experienced that day. The sketches are rough and in no particular order – one day might be in the top right of the page, the next might be in the middle of the opposite side, but I have chosen to think that this simply adds to the “overgrown charm” of the exercise. Plus, it’s sort of neat to see the page get filled up as the month progresses. January’s effort is over on the left.
In addition to my “Etch-a-Joy-Sketch,” I resolved to do something else. Every month, I intend to use something up. This was actually hard for me, but today, I finished off a tube of rich body cream that – you guessed it – I’d been “saving.”
That’s my double-barreled challenge for you as we enter the shortest, and around here the greyest month – first, look for a small joy everyday and take note of it. Second, use the “good stuff.” Wear that good perfume. Use your mother’s silver to stir your morning coffee. Wear your diamond studs to the grocery store. Slather on the moisturizer you hardly ever use since it was expensive. You get the idea.
You have the beautiful things. Use them.
Scatter joy, Divas!
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