No one gets out of here alive. So don’t worry about dying — ask yourself if you’re truly living.
For many years I was in thrall to ‘some day.’
My wife and I are both tennis fanatics and regularly tune in to the Grand Slams and most of the Masters. We knew we would go to the French Open ‘some day.’
And Wimbledon.
And the Australian Open.
One day friend asked me when ‘some day’ would come.
I reflected and then bought tickets to the Men’s and Women’s semifinals and finals. I told my wife and she was able to re-arrange her schedule. We went and had a grand time.
Two years later we went to the Australian Open. I bought tickets for Wimbledon the following year but Covid intervened.
There is something we forget – we are all on an inexorable journey that will end with the obliteration of our individual ego.
The change is all around us but we try to ignore it. I vividly remember bringing my daughter home from the hospital. Her foot was half the size of my palm. Now she is married and a partner at a leading executive search firm. And she has given me three lovely grandchildren who will wake shortly and demand I play with them.
I taught my son chess, and he was amazed at how the pieces coordinated to produce winning combinations. Now he beats me routinely, has graduated from Columbia Law and advises major corporations.
I walk up flights of stairs that I would once run up.
I am glad that there is a handrail and previously I would never have noticed it.
Life is like a drop of water skittering around on a lotus leaf. It can fall over the edge any minute. An oil slick on the road, a madman with a knife, a mutant bacteria and our best laid plans gang aft agley.
The end is inevitable. The journey is irreversible.
We die because we are born and that begins the unrelenting odyssey. We don’t know how long it will last. Illness, accidents, mishaps do not cause the end – they merely dictate the timing.
So what matters is what you do with the time you have. In fact, with each day.
The tragedy is not that you will die. The tragedy is that so many never live. Don’t be one of them.
Don’t fall into the ‘some day’ trap.
Use the best china.
Go on that vacation.
Call your friend who you always wanted to keep in touch with but life got in the way.
Do it now.
Peace!
