Well, there's just been a lot of everything. I think this will be one of those years we'll be glad to pack away come December, but in the distant future the photos will come up on AppleTV and we'll gaze in awe at them and think, My what an amazing time that was. That's life. The mind has a way of disappearing the tough stuff (ask any woman who's given birth) so we'll all be okay to move on to the next pitfall, but old pictures have a way of reminding us of the finer things. I commented recently how we never take photos of the tough times in life, yet there are plenty of pictures of us smiling, people with their arms around each other staring straight at you, as if looking into the future to remind you specifically how fun this or that was. In this day and age with all of our pictures as bits and bytes on a hard drive or Sandisk card somewhere, it's something of an un-fun chore to sit down in front of a computer and look at old pics -which is what's so great about the AppleTV. You grab dinner and move to the couch one lonely night, and there it is: your fun life floating slowly past. And with all of the low times cropped out.

Years ago I heard of a study that asked elderly people what they wished they had done differently in their lives. Two things rose pronouncedly to the surface: they wished thy had risked more and they wished they had reflected more. Risk more, because life is so short, but reflect more? This came as something of a surprise to the researchers. Reflect more because, well, life is so short. Sometimes you have to stop, take it all in, and pull focus on what is -and was- good and right in the world. And there's plenty of it.



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