Excising Quantity

When everything goes well, we can suppress our tendency to count. Think about it. We're always counting things: how many minutes till we're off work, how many days until an important event, how old so-and-so is, how many cookies we have to bake to feed X amount of people, etc. You could pretty much keep counting forever and ever, always thinking of new things to count. You can count how many more pages are left in the book you've been reading for months. You can count how many years it's going to take you to finish graduate school. You can (but shouldn't) count how many childbearing years you have left.

Anyway, there occasionally occur some magical moments when counting ceases. I recently attended a dinner party during which that happened. I didn't count anything or think in terms of quantity at all for quite a long time. Before I knew it, I thought to check the time in my cell and it was 10:30 p.m.! It was mysterious how it happened. I know I had a second cookie, but it didn't strike me at the time to count up how much of everything I had eaten. I just ate and was satisfied. I didn't count how many people were there or how old each of them were. I didn't count how many people were dressed up and how many were casual. I really didn't think to count at all. There's something so liberating about excising quantity!