“You ought to buy some more life insurance if you can because it is almost never enough. What you have sounds like quite a bit, but it is not enough to take care of your family, not if you die young.”
We were in a sitting in the shvitz, myself and a bunch of guys I played basketball with at a gym I miss being a member of.
Must be about 18 years or so since then because I wasn’t a newlywed anymore but I was still a relatively new father and homeowner.
I didn’t doubt the value of the advice but the guy giving it was never going to get a dollar out of me because he cheated at pickup ball and that was enough to disqualify him.
Besides I had an agent who had already sold me a policy and if I wanted to make an adjustment I would contact him.
Thought about some of those moments today because I looked at present circumstances and told the interested parties that if I dropped dead it would provide a significant influx of cash, but it wouldn’t cover what I expect will happen during the rest of my working life.
“I expect that I’ll be around for decades or I’ll drop dead and be as surprised by it as everyone else.”
“Gee Josh, that is a very pleasant way of looking at things.”
“It is realistic. Based upon my health thus far and genes I have ample reason to believe the world will be stuck with me until I pass 100. That is my expectation and the goal is to be in good health for all of that.
But, sometimes life throws us a curveball and I expect if that happens it will be a different experience. Unlikely to be in between, but that is just my gut.”
It will be too fast, whatever it is.
That’s my expectation too, whenever the time comes I’ll feel like I have more to do. If I discover I have some terminal illness I promise I’ll fight.
Not because of my family or friends but because I am not wired to just accept much of anything. They may provide extra motivation, but I’ll fight until I have nothing left.
S’pose you can say some of this comes from a different situation, a different conversation in which I had to remind someone that having a high threshold for pain creates some other issues.
That it blurs and obscures the need to surrender and ask for a different kind of help and to recognize that sometimes failure is an option.
Sometimes heroes fail.
Sometimes you have to let go and accept things, embrace the pain and know that you may have been relegated to dancing in the fire because it is all that is left.
Don’t know if I was heard and understood. Don’t know if I have lost my ability to communicate and connect.
Too close, too blind, too much too and not enough other so I flail around and hope.
That kid in the photo wouldn’t get it. Wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t accept. I would refuse to engage and he’d be infuriated by it, but he’d live.
I’d tell him to buy some more life insurance and share some other advice based upon benefit of age and experience.
Maybe he’d listen. Maybe he’d hear it and maybe it would make a difference.
Don’t know.
Doesn’t look like London Bridge is falling down, but I have seen stranger things than that happen in 2020.
Fade to black, turn out the lights and watch Roy’s guitar remind us to hold on tight.
