Completion ~ Access to a Truly Remarkable Day

Today was a truly remarkable day. Truly remarkable. It didn’t start out that way.

 I was at the dentist’s office this morning, dealing with an abscess tooth. I was sore and nauseated.

 As the day unfolded, all of that seemed to just be the groundwork for a truly remarkable day.

 In 2008, I took nearly 500 CDS from their cases and packed them in a box to take to Kansas City with me. The thought was that I would be able to store them in my iTunes account and I would have time to do that.

 I did not have time. I am fairly certain that I didn’t listen to more than five of them during my eleven month stay in KC. I brought them back to Butte, planning to return them to their jewel cases and store them in iTunes then.

 I have moved twice since then, taking all those empty cases with me ~ and taking the box of CDS came along for the ride. In March of 2011, I hired an organizer who worked with me to get things managed and stored. One of the projects we identified was to get those CDS into their cases, sorted, and stored in iTunes. Within a month of that organizing, I lost the box of CDS.

So imagine. I have a box of +/-500 CDS and cannot find them. I have empty jewel cases for those CDS. And I am now sure I have lost those CDS and their music ~ saved over the previous twenty plus years. I often laid awake at night imagining the music, the money I had invested, and all the places the CDS could have gone. (At $10 per disc, that’s about $5,000, in case you were wondering.)

 A couple weeks ago, a friend mentioned he needed work, and I hired him to work with me to get some projects complete. Today, he arrived at 2 pm to continue getting through the sorting. I figured we would end up tossing those cases, knowing the CDS were long gone. 

 Until this afternoon. Today, in the bottom of a 40-inch box, I found that shoebox filled with the CDS. And by 7 pm, we had sorted all the CDS, restoring the found discs to their cases. I was so excited, I started to cheer. I laughed. I danced a little. I celebrated. Completing this task brought completion, peace of mind, and integrity to what had been a mess for nearly four years.

 And I wondered. What else have I lost that I can celebrate? What relationships have been put away in a box for safe keeping? What practices have I ended that would serve me? What is in the closet that would make a difference in someone else’s? Where can I take the extra fill-in-the-blank-stuff that will be a contribution to others? Where else are things a bit of a mess? To what else might I bring completion?

 Today? Today was a truly remarkable day.