Your Expiration Date

We’re all familiar with dairy and food expiration dates.  Take a big gulp of old milk from your refrigerator shelf and you’ll get an instant reminder that you should have checked the expiration date before you decided to partake in the not-so-delicious beverage.  So many times food that should not be consumed gets overlooked.  Sour cream a few days after the date should still be good, right?  Maybe.  But my blog today is not about food.  It’s about life and relationships and THEIR expiration dates.

I believe we are born with an expiration date, we just don’t know what that date is.  And would we want to know, really?  Your life would be so much different if you actually knew when you’d expire.  We might live each day to the fullest, enjoying each and every moment until our last breath.  Or maybe not.  Can you imagine finding out that you’re going to live until you’re 100?  It might not be too bad until you find out that you have many health related issues and your financial circumstances aren’t the most ideal.  Your departure from this world might not come soon enough, or on the other end of the spectrum, it may come too early. Either way we don’t have a choice.  For the most part.  Unless we take life termination into our own hands, we’re here until we depart.

On the other hand, our relationships most likely DO have expiration dates.  Imagine if you will, connecting with an individual either on a friend or lover basis.  We’ve all had good and bad partnerships.  A friend who no longer is worth the aggravation of “being a friend” to.  A lover who has gone in a different direction than you are going.  We make the decision to either allow the sour milk to stay in the fridge or dump it down the drain and buy another quart.

Or do we?

Are we holding onto that toxic relationship for fear?  Fear that we may never get another chance to quench our thirst, no matter how pungent the flavor?  Fear that we’ve been living with rancid milk for so long and have become accustomed to the taste, however bad that taste may be?  Fear that we need the nutrients from the curdled drink to survive?  Or are we just lazy, not really wanting to throw the liquid away because we don’t feel like going out to buy more?  Decisions about the kind of cream to purchase,  low fat, no fat or high fat?  Maybe a completely different KIND of milk all together.

I talk about our associations with other people referring to them as milk because I think we’re all guilty of consuming sour milk.  Living a life with someone who is toxic, past their expiration date, and not believing that we are worth having a good glass of pasteurized, homogenized beverage.  That friend who no longer “feels” like a friend.  That partner who no longer provides our lives with nourishment.  The nourishment we need to be happy, healthy and enjoy each and every day.  They’ve gone beyond their expiration date.

So my request is this:  Take inventory of your stock.  Look around at the things you consume on a daily basis.  Pay close attention to what those things bring to your life.  Make the decision to keep it or toss it.

Get rid of the sour milk in your life.