How Much Time Do We Get

You won’t find a question mark, period or exclamation point on the headline because I don’t know what I want to put there.

Can’t decide if I am trying to ask a question, make a statement or do both.

Nor can I decide if I feel like telling those who ignore me that they are being ridiculous because we don’t know how much time we get.

I could get hit by a bus or shot by a mugger and that would be the end of it for conversations with me.

Yeah, I know I say I am going to live to be 130 and that the bus is unlikely to kill me and the mugger will find out that I am the guy that kicks his/her ass regardless of being shot.

Not because I am tough or crazy but because I pulled the Joker from the card  deck life uses and crazy nonsense happens to me.

Which is why I expect I would survive the crash and the mugging and ultimately become 2.5 times as cranky as I am now.

That leaves me 33% percent less cranky and 50% percent less crazy than 50+ year-old Jewish women from the Midwest.

I Don’t Listen…Well

A while back I was told I ought not to quote too many love songs or poems in these blog posts and that persisting in doing so was not going to earn praise nor favor.

“You only hear what you want to hear” were among the words that were directed my way. I simply shrugged my shoulders because I hear and see far more than people realize.

That is not to say some things don’t go over my head or that I don’t miss things because that isn’t true.

I know things but I am not omniscient nor omnipotent.

There are times I don’t listen well because I get lost in my work, world and my focus is elsewhere. Ask Ma and Pa Wilner about the days when I was a bouncing baby boy and they’ll tell you they wondered if I was deaf.

Why?

Because I didn’t always pay attention to their trying to connect with me and while I can’t say I remember exactly what I was thinking back then I do know I have gotten lost in my thoughts for as long as I can remember.

If I am truly engaged in a project or idea I have a laser focus that blots out the world around me and I don’t always listen well.

On the other hand if I don’t appear to be lost in thought or working on something it is possible I have made an active choice to ignore you.

Much as I sometimes like to tell you exactly how I feel there are times where I find the silence more gratifying, so there is that.

Just One More Day

This August will mark the 20th anniversary of my friend David’s death.

It seems impossible to believe that so much time has passed but it has and I have to imagine that I am not the only one who would have liked to have had just one more day with David.

I am not the only one who looks back at the 29 year-olds we were and is amazed by how much life has been crammed into the 49 year-olds we’re all becoming.

We went from newly weds who hadn’t had children yet, didn’t own homes and thought of retirement and empty nests as something old people focused upon.

Twenty years later we are those old people and we’re trying to hold onto youth and figure out if we made good use of the decades since.

Some of us have answered those questions by getting divorced, switching jobs/careers and or moving…in some cases multiple times.

Some of us have done none of those but thought about the possibilities many times and now with the tick tock of the clock ever louder it is more important than ever to ask and answer those questions.

Change happens whether we want it to or not and we’ll lose people to life no matter what we do.

Those losses won’t always be because of death either. Some will choose to let go and others will refuse to do so but it won’t matter because life will move them from being close enough to hold to too far away to be seen.

The question will be what will you choose to do about those changes and will you find an outstretched hand waiting to take yours or an empty space where fingers once were.

Spitting Blood

Sometimes you spit blood because you took a shot the mouth and sometimes it is for other reasons.

This roller coaster we ride on a planet that circles a giant ball of flame doesn’t come with instructions or a time line.

You don’t know what the dawn of a new day will bring and can’t rely upon what has always been to always be.

So you have to learn how to adapt, pivot and move as needed.

You must figure out what you want and what you need so that you can develop a road map to to get not just what you need but what you want too.

And when it comes to people, well you can’t control what they do or do not do but you can be cognizant of who is of paramount importance to you.

You can figure out who you always want to be connected to and who always wants to be connected to you.