When You're Waiting On Your Real Life to begin
With all due attribution to Colin Hay and the producers of "Scrubs" for my title, as I ponder through my ponderous mood of the moment, I can't help thinking at the age of 48 - this is exactly where I am.
I know this may sound sad, even pathetic to some readers, and I know there are dozens of choices I could have made at many turns in my life that would have put me in a very different place than where I am now - for better or worse - but the choices I've made combined with circumstances I can't control, leave me feeling like this is not only exactly where I am, but where I'm meant to be.
To many people, that may seem like a waste of many years of life - but then, what is it to them? I don't see it as that way at all. I feel like I have a ton of good memories that few people could ever match. True, there are lots of places I haven't seen, lots of money I haven't made - even relationships I haven't been able to keep, even some really, really important ones - but not only am I not going to waste time saying this is someone else's fault, I'm not going to waste time denying - or admitting - that it's my own fault.
Does it really matter? Today, every today, is always a new day. Whatever you have, whatever you don't have, whatever you can or can't do - today is a new opportunity. And it's also just one day - when I say "waiting for my real life"...that's a vision of a lot of years, a life ahead - and not behind.
It's an image of a moment in a bigger capsule of time, much bigger - an image of patience, and an understand that things that have happened before and been taken away from you need to be accounted for before you can move on.
You may think you know where you want to go, but is it worth taking a little time to really sit back and count the cost?