This will be a perspective piece delivered in the first person. It will not be a hit and run job with a third person zinger or revelation shoehorned in some out of the way corner of the article.
Will it be witty? Wise? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps pithy but most of all, hopefully, a coherent offering of principles that everyone wants, thinks they have, and then forgets about or shuns when life gets hard, scary, dangerous, or annoying.
Days, like this one and succeeding tomorrows, tend to be well planned at least in my head, hurricane days excepted. I get up at around 6 AM to make the coffee and feed the cat. Note that I didn’t say “wake up at 6 AM” but rather “get up,” because presuming consciousness let alone sentience on my part at that hour is a lot to ask. “Getting up” normally covers most contingent eventualities.
After checking my email, reading online newspapers and a few blogs and staring at the empty cellphone screen for a spell, I poke a few words on my laptop for my daily. After that I take a shower and use as much of the hot water as I can because who knows whether this shower might be my last opportunity to bathe and smell civilized just before an unplanned ER visit.
Oops, there I go again. Let me stop going off on tangents and diverting myself from this task and get back to business . . . I guess I am finally writing this piece because personality-wise I am an inveterate procrastinator yet someone who intellectually despises leaving things unsaid or unfinished. Not “pretty bow wrapped up” finished, mind you, but more a measure of closure complete. While I lived professionally for three plus decades and live now comfortably during retirement in the neighborhood of ambiguity, I know that it frustrates many others a lot and complicates the loss process (no, I am not sick).
So with that in mind, here are a few random thoughts and musings that might act as an alpha version 1.0 of closure should my routine for some future tomorrow go awry.
Life had been good to me. At times even great. This was and is tons better than most people in the world get.
I have been blessed with friends. More than a few were amazing and transformative.
I knew and now know love. Not just the traditional, romantic amour, but the true, soulmate, brotherly and got my six types of love.
Life has been fun. More often than I could have hoped for. Even those fun times which lacked full-on zone-5 afterburner gusto were great.
Cool things have littered my life. I was given early and often authority and tasks to accomplish, far exceedingly my age and abilities, to complete at a young Navy type and post military service consultant. I was allowed to learn from my mistakes on the run and made many good things happen with my shipmates. I had not one, but two fabulous daughters, and three very accomplished grandchildren. I rode motorcycles across Southeast Asian coastlines and European mountains. I drank the best Italian wine (Sassicaia) ever with the family members who grew the grapes and made the wine. I helped plan and execute operations that went after bad actor Arab terrorists decades before 9/11. I drove showroom floor passenger cars in excess of 200 MPH on Australian and American roads. I visited the Louvre in Paris and South of the Border in South Carolina and saw the world’s largest concrete prairie dog on I70 in Kansas. I have shaken hands with three Presidents of the United States.
Cool things: Louvre (top), South of the Border (below left) and World’s Largest Prairie Dog (below right)
Most of the time I was a good person. I didn’t always accomplish that. At times — some of which were extended — I was selfish, vain, proud, hedonistic, and slothful. Hopefully, I briefly waded in those dark pools rather than wallowed in them.
Despite my upbringing and best intentions, I was not always pleasant to everyone along the way. I don’t think I was ever cruel. Well, not intentionally cruel — except for the bad guys. Screw them.
Regrets? A few but not very many.
I don’t think I took enough chances during the middle third of my life. I’m not talking about dangerously risky stuff – I did more than my fair share of those things throughout. There were junctures where the risks I could have taken, both big and small, might have turned this good life into a persistently great one. Careers as a standup comic, writer, and charity volunteer, for example, were ignored since my Midwestern German-Irish work ethic whispered in my ear, “You gotta have a job, a regular paycheck, health insurance and security.”
I regret that I didn’t do something earlier about my smoking, over the top boozing, and unhappy family life.
But my biggest regret is that I never burst out loud exclaiming “Fantastic!” when unexpectedly confronted with the songs of life I was unconsciously waiting to hear and sing. Not so much for the success that might have accompanied my singing them but that the songs might have been mine and mine alone. On the other hand, however, the completely unlimited emotional state that would have led me to assume those risks would have likely led me winding up incarcerated, committed by court order to a nervous hospital, or dead.
So, don’t be so afraid. Take a chance. Do something new. Every day, even if it’s something small. Eat at a restaurant you’ve never visited. Take different ways to work and the store and pay attention to what you are driving or walking past. Look up and to the side, not just ahead and down. Dance, sing (yes, even karaoke), ride motorcycles, and do the other things that you have wanted to do but haven’t.
Be passionate. This should be one’s life major.
Leave something behind. A child. A poem, a letter, a painting. A house or a chair built, or a garden planted. Something your hand touched, so your soul remains after you’re gone. Change something from the way it was before into something that’s like the good/better/best you after you touched it. In other words, store in a receptacle the important things you learned about life that should not be forgotten.
Is there a canonical list of words that neatly distills the foregoing perspective reflections? As a few sailors of my cognizance did as they sailed their life’s seas, I could have tattooed them on my body as I encountered and learned them and finally incorporated them into some tribal ink design on my arm, chest, shoulder, and back during my now ripening stage of life. I am admittedly a sissy and still shun the undeniably painful needlework process that would have been involved. Nonetheless, I lived by these words for the most part. On a few, I fell short.
Here is my draft list:
Courage. Integrity. Joy. Loyalty. Indulgence. Desire. Commitment. Chance. Creativity. Family. Passion. Tolerance. Acceptance. Beauty. Perseverance. Inspiration.
But wait, there’s more. Well, just one . . . Love.
And now back to my regular posting.
Copyright © 2016 From My Isle Seat