In my dream I told her that one day you may have an uncomfortable realization about who you live your life with and who you don’t.
She said it was complicated and I shook my head no.
“It is only as complicated as we make it out to be. If you want something you can plan. You can change the clocks so you leave earlier or take other steps to build a roadmap that removes some of the complexity. Maybe not all, but some.”
I heard a big influx of air, as if someone was surprised and woke up hearing myself mutter “ok air sucker.”
A neighbor’s leaf blower outside of my window was to blame for my not finishing the dream and is why I didn’t try to go back to sleep.
I took a moment to try and figure out whose voices I heard but the leaf blower and the dog barking distracted me.
Wandered over to my work laptop, booted it up and spent a few minutes taking care of what I didn’t get to during the week.
“Josh, your dreams are crazy because you’re working 7 days a week.
Might have been my own voice or might have been dad’s, not really sure but I know I was the only one in the room.
I am starting to hear more of my generation talk about the second half of life and what that is going to look like.
Within the recent past I have heard more than one story of men dropping dead from heart attacks and women dying from some sort of cancer.
None were older than 55 and some were short of 50.
I haven’t got enough data in front of me to say these deaths are unusual and so it is possible that while tragic these fit into the averages that make life what it is.
What makes it hard is there were not preexisting conditions we can use to explain why they died. You can’t say they weighed 900 pounds or they were playing in traffic.
Every time I hear about it one of them I take a moment to look at my life and assess whether it is what I want it to be.
Inevitably it reminds me about some situations that I haven’t yet put to rest although I once thought I had.
Some might say I have spent too much time thinking about it but I don’t because I have learned to pay attention to some things.
I am cognizant of the voice inside my head that pushes me to do or not do things. I am very aware of who I enjoy spending time with and who I will share my thoughts with.
Some of it frustrates me for reasons I won’t discuss in this particular venue but I don’t sit idly by and watch life pass me by.
Every day I take action and do something to move from here to there recognizing that I can only control so much.
A thousand years ago a group of twenty somethings sang along with this song and danced on a grassy hill.
Afterwards one boy stood on that grassy hill and said he thought it sent the wrong message.
“You take it too seriously. It is just a song.”
“Yeah, if I take it as a song it is fine but when I think about the lyrics it seems like a way to rationalize not striving to take care of your heart.”
It turned into a longer conversation and somewhere around 3 AM people broke into couples and went their separate ways.
One wonders how three decades of life experience has impacted those who participated in that discussion and whether minds have been changed.
I know of a few who say it is too late to make changes because they have too much invested to shift gears but I don’t understand that.
What if you could have twenty or more years in a better situation? That is a long enough to do something with.
Sometimes I take that as sort of an intellectual exercise and try to figure out how much time you ought to have to push yourself to make that change.
If it is less than 20 would you look at 10 or would 15 or more years be the cut off?
