One of my favorite analogies about life was shared with me from my friend Pat.  I was really struggling with letting go of past hurts and disappointments.  Pat asked me why I was devoting so much energy to trying to change those things that can’t be changed, no matter how much I wished them to be different.  Then he told me his analogy of the hourglass.

We all have an hourglass that represents the length of our lives.  The hourglass has clear sand it, we don’t know how much is in there or when our lives will end.  The moment we are born, the hourglass is flipped upside down and the sand starts running through.  When it comes out, each grain is either white or black. It is white during those times that we are appreciating our lives, being good human beings, making good choices, etc.  It is black when we are stuck in the past, complaining, being mean…you get the idea.  So all of us, when we look at the sand of the part of our lives we have lived already, have some shade of gray.  None of us has been either all good or all bad in how we deal with things, we are all somewhere in between.

Here is the thing…We can’t control the amount of clear sand that is in the hourglass, it is a finite amount and could run out anytime. We have to live our lives today, this isn’t a dress rehearsal. We also can’t take the sand that already came out and change its color.  It is either white or black, it has already happened and we can’t go back in time. We have to accept what life is right now because the only thing accomplished by wishing for the black sand to be white is to make more black sand fall as we waste our lives on regret.  The only thing that we can control in that equation is the neck of the hourglass, this moment.  So I began to ask myself when I woke up in the morning, “Robin, is this going to be a white sand day or a black sand day? How do you want to live your life right now at this moment.”  That line of thinking has totally changed my life.  Thanks Pat.

So today, my first day of homelessness, I woke up late and went on a spectacular bike ride.  I am still struggling to find a photo client that I like for displaying pictures, but here are a few from my ride.  It is definitely a white sand day.