The Last Time

What If You Knew?

The premise of this one is quite simple: Would you act any differently or say anything different if you knew that you were doing something for the last time? This can be applied to almost any situation: the last time you'll visit a favorite place, the last time you'll bake your favorite dish, the last time you'll hear a favorite song, the last time you'll see a loved one, or even the last day you will make love.I'm sitting on a bench right now at Quiet Garden Park at Crandon Beach on Key Biscayne in Miami. I've walked past this park at least ten times and it never caught my attention until today. It's a beautiful park and is very accurately named: Quiet. Quiet in this sense implies it is free of most human-engineered distractions, as the only noises I hear are from the natural world: palm trees rustling in the wind and lizards snapping branches as they walk. It's a really nice park and I'm thinking it will be one of my new favorite places. Thinking ahead, it would be difficult to guess when the last time is that I will visit this park. If I had to give a general estimate, I might say it would be within the next year, although I also like to think that I might come back and visit many years or even decades from now, so as you can see, it is very difficult to tell when the last time will be.This brings into question whether my decision alone is the only factor that can determine if this is the last time that I visit. For whatever reason, the county, state, or park officials could determine many years from now that this park is no longer worth maintaining. I may wish to visit again one day but would not be able to since it no longer exists as I remembered it.This thought exercise made me appreciate a task as simple as cutting the grass. My parents just moved from our childhood home, where I lived for at least 12 or more years. Like most Dads, mine was particular about having a meticulously maintained lawn, and my brother and I for many years would take turns cutting the grass. It only took about an hour, and sometimes we both wouldn't want to do it because we had other things we'd rather be doing like playing outside, playing video games, or simply anything else. Over the years, we learned to appreciate cutting the grass. I see that solitary hour as one of the first forms of meditation in my life. A decade or two have passed since the peak of my grass-cutting days, and I'm pleasantly reminded of my youth each time I smell freshly cut grass. This makes me question when the last time that I cut the lawn at my childhood home was and I can't recall. Maybe I was home from college for a month or two and that was the last time, or maybe it was well before that. Had I known it was my last time, I like to think that I would have stopped the blades for a long minute to take an even deeper breath, pollen aside.It is also possible that instead of regretting not having had the foresight to consciously soak in the last time I cut the grass, it is simply enough to sincerely appreciate that at this point I will never have the opportunity to do that again. Coming to peace that you've experienced something for the last time is paramount to fully appreciating the fleeting nature of experience.