WE’RE ALL LOSING OUR MARBLES

by adam harbinson

Here’s a story that will mean more to some of us than others, depending how far down the road of life we are; it’s the story of a thousand marbles. A friend of mine was shuffling toward his study the other day with a mug of coffee in one hand and his morning paper in the other.

‘What began as a typical Saturday morning,’ he told me, ‘turned into one of those lessons that life hands you from time to time.’ He turned on his radio and was fiddling with the dial when he came across an unfamiliar station with a man’s voice telling about some research he did one day.

In the UK the average male life expectancy is just over seventy-six years, he was fifty-seven; about nineteen years to go, he multiplied nineteen by fifty-two – that’s how many Saturdays there are in a year – and so he figured that if were to enjoy an average lifespan, he could look forward to another thousand Saturdays. So he went from toyshop to toyshop buying every single marble they had until he had a thousand. He took them home and put them into one of those big sweetie jars and set it in a conspicuous place in his kitchen.

‘Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away,’ explained the man on the radio. He said there were times when it felt like he was like watching an egg-timer, only it was his life that was draining away.

‘I found that by watching the marbles diminish,’ he said, ‘I focused more on the really important things in life. It concentrated my mind; helped me get my priorities in order. And then came this morning,’ he went on. ‘This morning I took the very last marble out of the jar. If I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And we can all use a little more time.’

When I heard that story it reminded me of a sociological study Tony Campolo did when he was Professor of Sociology in Eastern University Pennsylvania. Tony asked fifty people over the age of ninety-five, ‘If you had your life to live over again, what would be different? What changes would you make?’

Three answers dominated the responses of the fifty old folk; they said they would risk more, they would reflect more, and they would do more things that would live on after they were dead. Not one of them said they wished they had spent more time at the office.

How many marbles are there in your jar? At times I wish there were more than a thousand in mine, there’s not, but more and more as I progressively lose my marbles, I find I’m checking myself to see if I’ve got the balance right; am I spending too much time in the office, am I frittering away hours doing things that benefit nobody, including myself. And the challenge that faces me every Saturday as I discard another marble is this; will somebody’s world be a better place at the end of this week because of something I’ve said or done – or haven’t said or done! Do I brighten the room by walking into it, or do I brighten it by leaving? It’s an exercise I can recommend, because while none of us can add a single moment to our lives, the next best thing is to learn to value the time we have.