How Do YOU Measure A Year?

People of my high school graduating class, particularly theater nerds like me and especially my friends, remember well the 1996 musical Rent.

Made especially poignant by the death of the creator the night before it’s on-stage premiere, it’s just a great story. It’s emblematic of the time that reality TV was taking off, gay people were finally being portrayed on regular television, AIDS was being talked about and accepted, and coffee shops were becoming ubiquitous. (In fact, this past Christmas Eve, on Tumblr, “December 24th, 9:00 p.m., EST” was trending. This line is the opening of the show.)

The songs are catchy and mean a lot to a wide swathe of people, but I don’t think one as much as Seasons of Love. (The Marjorie Stoneman Douglas drama students performed it during the Tony awards. You know, from the Florida school where 17 people were shot and killed by another student and gave fuel to the still-ongoing discussion of gun violence in schools.)

“One hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes…How do you measure a year?”

So, like most parents and as you all know, I am crazy mad in love with my three year old little girl. She is my treasure, my pure little bug, funny and determined and considerate. I was watching one of those stupid videos about “The nights are long but the years are short” and trying not to cry and lamenting how we’ve already had three years and only have fifteen left and if IhadtogroupthoseyearsintothirdsIwouldonlyhave… You get it.

Then I remembered this song and realized: I have one hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes. Each year. Multiplied by 18 that’s a shit-ton and that’s more like it.

So these days, I’m thinking of that song and reminding myself that I have one hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes of a gift. So enjoy it.