From minute to minute, day to day, and year to year, everything in the world is changing. What is alive is dying. What is new becomes older. What is already old will eventually disappear or change into a form alien to the original.
We react with a mix of shock and sadness as we become painfully aware that everyone and everything everywhere are no longer what they were, nor will they ever be again.
Everything on earth is slip-sliding its way down a seemingly endless one-way street to be replaced by the same or something different.
We become depressed as we find ourselves asking if there is any reward to any of our sincere efforts or we question why anyone should do anything not only for themselves but for anyone or anything else. Our logic becomes so twisted that we wonder if life is worth living.
In doing so, however, we are only blindsiding ourselves. We aren’t seeing all of this as the unfolding of a great opportunity for us to lead a truly exceptional life that’s available to anyone for the asking and taking.
Remember this: An interesting life is a choice.
At first that may sound like silly talk, particularly if you tend to be the reserved and quiet type. Wrestle with it long enough, however, and you are likely to decide it’s a critically important point that far too many people either don’t get, or if they do, don’t bother to thoroughly think through. They are the ones who often say “I’ll get around to doing that one of these days,” or “That’s something I want to do but now isn’t a good time,” or “That’s a wish I’ve always had, but it will never come true.”
They don’t realize how rapidly their lifetime is passing by, that the heavens will never part to make it possible for them to do what they would like to do, see what they would like to see, meet those they would like to get to know, and have experiences that until then they had only dreamed about.
Some people, however, clearly see that big picture. They gratefully even excitedly accept the resources and opportunities they have at any given moment, day, month, or year, make the most of them, then let them serve as stepping stones leading to an even more rewarding future.
I have never forgotten a chance meeting with a guy in Hawaii with whom I shared thoughts on this subject. Only 27 years old, he smiled as he told me that after having already had one life, it was time for him to think about what he wanted to do during what he was calling his “second life.” I felt overwhelmed as he then revealed that from the time he had turned 16, he had served in the military, roamed the world as a deck hand on an ocean freighter, hired on as a helper on a ranch in Australia, sold insurance, clerked in the men’s section of a department store, and worked in an Alaskan fish cannery.
Thanks to his frugal living and leaving the “boy stuff” of women, booze, and drugs to others, he had become financially secure and ready to decide how best to proceed from where he was.
When we met he was on his way to his grandmother’s house on top of a high hill near Lahaina, Maui. There, he was going to sit on the porch and give his future a good think while looking outward toward the Pacific Ocean’s infinite horizon.
Even then, he knew he wanted to get married and become the best husband and dad he could be. At the same time, he saw himself taking advantage of what he had already learned plus fulfilling his desire to learn even more. He imagined the result to be much the same as it had been—many unique and exciting experiences leading to day to day feelings of personal accomplishment.
He said that when he got to the end, he wanted to look back and smile at all the exciting and rewarding pleasures he had experienced and the lives he had touched while living the only life he would ever have.
As we said goodbye, I was convinced he would follow through and in that regard, I’ve never met a finer role model. Just to be in the company of someone so curious and passionate about life was extraordinary.
To him, everything is immediate, seasoned with the steadfast reality that every day becomes tomorrow’s yesterday—and so it is with each of us.
