Somewhere there’s a last backyard game you played without knowing it was the last one. Play the next one like it is.

Most endings are never announced. Things that happen regularly just happen less, then stop, and the final time looks exactly like all the others while it is going on. That is not a tragedy so much as the ordinary way repetition ends, but it does mean the last one always sits in the ordinary pile.

Take something you do often with people you like and give it your full attention this week, as though it might not repeat. Stay to the end of it. You lose nothing if there turn out to be a hundred more.