I have been getting
stuck in this groove lately of picking quotes that make me examine myself.
This one is a complete hand job.
“It’s never too late to be what you
might have been.”
Might have been? What the hell is
that?
About a year before my dad went up to heaven,
we had a long phone conversation on a cold Sunday morning. Somewhere along the
way, my Oldman asked me a simple question.
“Do you have any regrets Moose?”
It was a fair question at the time.
I was about a year removed from my divorce.
My career was running into a dead end on a trading floor that was itself
becoming a relic. Money was tight. I didn’t see my kids as much as I wanted to.
All the crap that can pile up on a guy in
his early fifties had piled up.
…And underneath all of it was that quiet
realization that the life I had at fifty did not look much like the life the
twenty-year-old version of me figured I would have.
I sat there for a second.
I was on my couch, looking out the window at
the snow falling on a Sunday morning in the Divorced Dads District, talking to
my dad on the telephone.
“Nope,” I finally told him. “No regrets,
Dad. I might have taken a couple wrong turns and missed a few exits along the
way, but no regrets.”
…And I meant it.
I have never spent much time worrying about
what I might have been. Sure, I could have done some things differently.
Hell, I could have done a lot of things differently.
There were jobs I could have taken. People
I could have treated better. Money I could have saved. Chances I could have
taken and chances I shouldn’t have taken.
Change any one of those decisions and the
whole course of my life changes, but that is the problem with might have
been.
You only get to see the curtain you
picked.
It is like being on Let’s Make a Deal
and choosing Curtain Number Two. Maybe there was a trip to Hawaii behind Number
One, and you end up with an inflatable swimming pool.
For the next forty years, you can sit
around bitching about Hawaii. Except nobody ever opens Curtain Number One. Maybe
Hawaii was back there, maybe it was a goat.
You never know. All I know is what was
behind the curtain I picked. There were some lousy years behind it. There were
mistakes, heartbreaks, bounced checks, divorces, dead ends and more than a few
mornings when I wondered what the hell I was doing.
I do know what was behind the curtain I
picked… my three kids, one or two dear friends and a shit ton of good people
along the way.
There was a trading floor, road trips,
rugby pitches, baseball games, Christmas mornings, concerts, Mardi Gras, laughter,
and ordinary Sunday mornings that I would give anything to have one more time.
So, I never became what I might have
been.
Good. I became what I am and at
sixty years old, I am far more interested in what I can still become than some
imaginary guy I was supposed to be.
My Oldman has been gone almost six years
now, but I still think about that snowy Sunday and the question he asked me.
Do I have regrets?
Sure, Dad, a few, but I
wouldn't trade curtains. Not even for Hawaii.
There is a New Moon tonight. You won’t
see it and that is the point.
The old moon disappears into the darkness
before beginning another trip around the sky. Another cycle ending and another
one quietly beginning.
That is a better way to think about our own
lives. We spend too much time staring backward at what might have been when
there is still something ahead waiting to become.
The moon does not regret its last trip
around the Earth. It just starts another one and so can we.
Notice shit. Do stuff.
