I did What?

Yesterday Dr. Gibby called me just as I was getting ready to leave for the gym, and I made a sudden change in plans, didn’t even shower, threw on some clean clothes over this dirty body, pounded my hair down, brushed my teeth and fled out the door (even no makeup!)to take care of some issues on his slides for yesterday’s talk.

Then I spent the rest of the day finishing up the next talk. At nearly 7 pm I pressed ‘save’ one last time on the presentation and felt proud of the work I had done. This one was really, really done. Nothing hanging out there half finished because I simply ran out of time. And I was truly satisfied with that.

Having saved the product, I drug it from its file on my computer out to a file on the server so Dr. Gibby could access it in Arizona. Just a split second before I hit the yes button, too quick for it to register behind my tired eyes, the screen popped up with its typical “this file already exists. Do you want to exchange the one dated 1/27/10 with the one dated 1/26/10?"

The words "too late" are some of the saddest in the human language: Too late to go back and hold my finger for one more second, just long enough that it could really register in my brain that I was writing over everything I had just spent the last seven hours doing. That registration didn't come until a half a second later, before it had even completed the save, but nevertheless, too late.

I quickly opened the file again, hoping against all odds that I had misread it. No way could I have done something so stupid – No Way?! No.
no
My chest heaved. I shut my computer down. Clocked out. Got in my car. And inside my heart, the tears of disappointment, the tears of tired, the tears of anger at myself for not ever learning the habit of saving the new versions with a new name because I hate the clutter of large files of old versions hanging around, all those self-recrimination tears washed over the inside of my heart.

Today I will reconstruct the files on my own time and move on. And really, in the scheme of things, this 'too late' experience is really very very inconsequential. It's the other 'too lates' I need to guard against and try so hard to prevent: the 'too late' to realize I'm running a red light, kinds of things. The 'too late' to say I'm sorry, and 'too late' to spend a minute with an elderly friend, and 'too late' to share the gospel, and 'too late' to create a beautiful memory with someone I love. Those are the important kinds of 'too late' I don't want to have happen in my life.

If only someone out there had a reverse time gadget?