Honoring the expiration date.
How are you with expiration dates?
Do you honor them faithfully? Do you think you have some nutritional wiggle room? Life is rife with irony, isn't it? I will not hesitate to dispose of food items that are given a life expectancy time stamp. I won't take the risk that something is not going to harm me. I assume if I dare eat beyond that date, any sickness is on me.
Why don't our relationships come with that same warning stamp?
- This friendship is perishable. Please enjoy by 1/31/09.
- Boss love will expire on 12/15/12
- For best results, terminate relationship by 8/01/08
Think about how much simpler things would be if upon meeting someone, you could fold back their collar and determine just how long they'll be good for you.
Question is...would you honor it if you knew it?
I suppose people do come with expiration "flags." Signs and behaviors that feel familiar in either positive or negative ways. Perhaps the best way to determine suspected shelf life, is to watch carefully...note carefully what feelings you feel, when you've felt them before and what they wound up revealing in time. A severe stomach cramp? Maybe a warm full, happy sensation of fullness? Sometimes it is you, sometimes it is them...but the fact that you are reminded is what's most relevant.
Perhaps the closest thing to an expiration date we were given, is our own sense of history. When something feels like you've done it before (and it didn't go well the last time), perhaps that's all the expiration date you need.
I think I've done all the history repeating I want to do. Best be sure, in all my interactions, I'll be mindful of the expiration date from here on out.
Comments
Funny and oh-so-true. Written by someone who clearly has had experience with such situations, has reflected upon them, and sees life for what it is.
I'm very skilled and effective in meeting deadlines in my day-to-day professional and personal lives...memos that have to be written, paperwork that needs to be completed, bills that need to be paid, meetings that need to be held, etc.
I have procrastinated, though, in making major decisions that could have significantly improved my financial or emotional circumstances. I have tended to believe that, with a little more time and effort on my part, existing situations will get better.
Your entry reminds me to set expiration dates to see if "better" ever comes to pass.
This is the best we can get. When I feel the tom foolery coming on from people, I back away. I firmly believe God plants people in our lives to see if we have learned from the past test. If not...then you are doomed to repeat it.
*walks away red faced*
i vote for expiration dates!
of course the one on me would probably be equivalent to the *ahem* manager's special on ground beef than something like, say, TANG (does that even HAVE an expiration date?)
Perhaps the closest thing to an expiration date we were given, is our own sense of history. When something feels like you've done it before (and it didn't go well the last time), perhaps that's all the expiration date you need.
Ya think?! I've been known to beat my head against a brick wall, repeatedly. I'm finally tired of having a continual headache..
I doubt I could live by such experation dates. What if you fell madly in love with someone, head over heels and declared them your soul mate only too see later that you'll only have 3 good years with them? How crushing would that be? How much time would spend in their presense wondering what it was about them (or yourself) that would be the demise of your union? What if worrying about the experation date itself was the cause of the break up?
Nope, I couldn't do it. I'd slap a piece of tape over that date and spend what time I had with them in bliss. I guess for me it's better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.
I'm not with the greatest love of my life today...but if I had it to do it all over again, I would...in an instant. Because when it was good - there was nothing in this world like it. I would have done some things differently, as he would to I bet. But still...yeah...I kinda see your point. Thanks Ben. :)
<Amen corner applause and hallelujahs here>
In fact, it is so good it has knocked what I wanted to say about expiration dates right out of my mind. Must be getting past my best before date, meself!
i think i'm with ben on this one--i wouldn't want to know, i'd rathe be blissful in my ignorance for as long as i had.
and for the love of god, i wish i could write like you, woman!
and i dig the new banner, too!
But people aren't like yogurt (most of the time, anyway) and I have lots of patience and I tend to give people many chances.
The odd thing is that most of the time I will throw stuff out when the expiry date is past but not if it is only a day or two.
But getting back to people... some of the most interesting and wonderful people are those who have been abandoned, left, forgotten or are invisible. I like to meet the people on the margins and keep them company. The ones who have a lot of time left (expiry-date-wise) will be ok, but the ones who are marked down or are about to expire have possibilities and interestingness and stories to tell.
[and off the topic as others have said, your new banner rocks and I don't think that it has an expiry date at all, it's timeless]
And no, I wouldn't want to know when the expiration date was... it would ruin it long before that date came up.
brilliant!
i'm one of those gambling fools who's willing to keep prescription meds in the cabinet well past their expiration dates (i think they're *quite* effective for more than one year!), but i would most definitely like to see an expiration date on people and relationships. i make no pre-judgments on whether i'd abide by them, though ... my memories are laced with good thoughts of friends and men who have since been removed from the rolodex.
but it sure would be worth the laugh!
I am sitting here smiling cuz I read what Ben said. We certainly did not enter into our relationship with a clear view of the future. People told us (still tell us) how relationships (like ours) tend to expire. At the start I worried but now... I look at all the places we saw the light go on... made a change and started fresh again. Even if I knew the future and saw the date in time that would be the end of us - I would continute to love him and treasure him and enjoy him - because that date is not now.
It was a long spoiling period versus a day where things simply went sour. I blame the person who stamped the date for forecasting far into the future rather than marking an earlier date to be safe.
Happy Explore page to you!!!
(#1 on the list as well!!)
:)
Thanks Cranky!!!!
Great stuff! :)
.... hehe thank you, that's one of the best posts ive read in a while ! It made me smile and it made me think =) Thank You.
*favourite*
Emz
Crankypants mentioned Tang. My last jar of Tang I rescued from the garbage when my housemate threw it out because it had just expired. I only used it a few times over the next couple of years, then I went overseas for a year. I finally threw it out last July, but only because I was moving house and could only take fifty pounds of what I owned. Expired Tang was not on the priority list.
Many of my past relationships have been the same. Clear warning labels that I discovered early on to say the expiration is near or even past, and still I stayed on.
I think expiration dates on relationships would cause anxiety and pressure. I prefer the licensing model of a relationship - what say every relationship expired in a certain time period unless you renewed it?
Well, I'm the type who always figures something will be good for at least a week beyond the printed expiration date. I buy those half-price items that will expire tomorrow as long as I think I will have it used up in a week or so. I smell things and squeeze them and poke at them to see if they're really no good, and sometimes I still take my chances even then. I'm not dead yet and have suffered remarkably few cases of food poisoning, so I guess it's working.
And I think I'd do the same for relationships. There is always a time for letting go, but I don't know that you could go by the dates. Better to poke and squeeze and sniff and trust your judgment, not some factory machine. While I certainly do understand Bill's situation above, I know my now-husband tried to give me some expiration dates a couple of times early in the relationship, but due to my keen nose, I knew he was wrong. And now we're married and obnoxiously happy.
I just wanted to add, Bill - you mentioned the weeks before the expiry date. Recently, I've had a real personal opportunity to look at my own expiry date and how I looked the other way on it, and tried to milk mine for another 3 or 4 years. My God...during that build-up to the moment, it WAS agony, the silence, the anxiety, the defensiveness. It's hell. In retrospect, perhaps getting blindsided isn't so bad. For me though, for next time, you better believe I'm cutting my losses the minute something starts to smell stale. That might not be the best thing, but it can't feel too much worse than staying too long at the fair...this is very much akin to that debate...tis better to have loved and lost...eh?