Why it is important to drop everything and make memories instead

I’ve been away at training for the better part of the week so I’m typing this from home as I try to catch up with some work. My little ones are at my feet. They have made a house from a blanket spread over the desk and they are huddled under the desk arguing over who they’re going to pretend to be. The sky has grown dark pretty early because heavy, grey clouds have been gathering over the city. It’s a fun place to be as a child — hiding under a blanket in the semi-darkness.

There’s a lot I remember from my childhood but what I remember most is the unconventional things I did as a child — not the normal, mundane things.

I have one memory of my sister and I making a house inside an empty, abandoned swimming pool. It wasn’t anything like our usual pretend house (sometimes an empty carton, sometimes under our mother’s dining table or behind the chicken house) so we pretended it was a mansion.

Our mansion was a little lopsided because it curved downwards toward the deep end but we had the time of our lives pretending to be rich women wearing white gloves who complained about everything. I guess that’s what we thought was a wealthy-person privilege — getting everything done just the way we liked it.

Now that we’re grown up, we’ve found that this wasn’t so far from the truth. It’s true money does give people a great deal of power. However, money can be there today and gone tomorrow.

There’s one thing you can’t lose though — your experiences. If you savour a piece of chicken today, you can’t un-eat it tomorrow when you have nothing to eat. It will be a memory etched in your mind. But had you known that you’d have nothing to eat the next day, would you have eaten the chicken? Would you have enjoyed it less because of the uncertainty? Or would you have stored the chicken till the next day?

Don’t put life on hold because you’re busy worrying about tomorrow. Live your best life now and store memories instead.