From somebody came a sperm and from another somebody came an egg. They got together and from that speck there soon began to sprout a head, arms, and legs. Soon it all got big enough, and out you plopped — wet, hungry, and squalling.
Some wildly anticipated your arrival, everybody else ho-hummed it. Whatever the welcome, there you were. Ready to live. Ready for a life. You could hardly wait.
If that happened back in the olden days, you were allowed to be a kid — get dirty and sunburned, jump off diving boards, climb trees, learn to ride a bike without training wheels, or otherwise do what is now called dangerous even death defying. But anyone born now is still called a kid — one of many modern and illogical disconnects.
First grade was followed by eleven more grades separated from each other by summers of about three months for fun and work. Then came four years of hard study at a college that readied you for climbing the success ladder. Now, there is pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, pre-school, school, no summers, followed by attending an expensive college that all too often results in a big question mark of what to do next.
Since then, the calendar has been your worst enemy. Ten years have gone by, or twenty, or thirty, or forty, maybe even fifty — a mix of being alone instead of with a companion, living in a rental instead of a mansion, spending vacations at home instead of touring Europe, barely able to pay bills instead of having appointments with your stock broker, and being ignored instead of notable.
None of it was supposed to be that way but came anyway. If that weren’t bad enough, you imagine your demise being marked by a one-paragraph death notice instead of a front page story.
You now realize that no matter how logical, none of it was a dress rehearsal, but rather the real thing. There is no going back, no reliving the past. Tragically or happily, everything already done is now a matter of permanent record. Or as they say on the street, you blew it.
So, there you sit. You just drained the last coffee from a brown stained cup instead of enjoying the last drop of 20-year Scotch from a crystal glass. You’re already late with the next payment on your already half worn out pickup truck instead of having already plunked down the cash for your new sports car that’s arriving next Wednesday.
Now, and out of all that, you are all that’s left.
Time for an inventory and for openers, you run your hand through your hair to verify you still have most of what you started with. Then you do the same with everything from there down to the bottoms of your feet. Everything that’s supposed to be there, still is.
All of that means if somebody were to come along and make off with everything else, you would still have yourself. No matter your age, you would still know everything you have learned and still remember everything that’s happened to you. Most important, you would still have the rest of your life.
Okay, now what?
Well first, count your blessings, even the little ones like being able to see, hear, think, talk, act, intercept, engage, and get along in some form or fashion. You still have some sense of curiosity and awareness of what you most would like to be even if it has been unexpectedly eclipsed.
So let the mind wander. Maybe ask a good friend or other qualified person willing and able to wander with you to help you figure out how to make the most of all the years you have left.
No matter your age, everything until now has been preparing you for this very time. If you are younger, it’s a mid-course correction, if older, a matter of catching up with yourself. After all, those many circumstances from which you have managed to emerge are your new tool kit. Absolutely no one can argue with what you already know and can do.
Even if you have been misled by thinking life is a dress rehearsal, it’s never too late to correct that mistake. In fact, you have never been better prepared to switch to the real thing, make it better while you’re doing it and more fully appreciate the reward you will receive after you’ve done it.
So what if you weren’t there when the curtain went up. You are now. And as anybody in the business will tell you, the audience is far more likely to forgive a late comer than they are a no-show.
