About Life.
I just turned 48, and over the past six months or so, I’ve been giving thought to how close I am to 50. More than that, somehow, it feels old. It’s the same feeling most of us have when we are teenagers, thinking about turning 40. Maybe this time, at this age, it’s not so much thinking about being old, and it’s more grappling with my own mortality.
Thinking about my mortality extends further than just the thought of dying. It has been reflecting on my life up until now, how incredibly fast it has gone, how I’ve spent that time, and how I’m going to spend the time I have left. It’s hard to wrap my head around how time seems to exponentially shrink as we get older. How time seems to divide itself each year.
If I’m being real, I’m not proud of my life up until now. Let me clarify, I’m proud of life as it pertains to my family, my wife, and children. I think it’s more about what I feel I should have achieved or done by now at this stage in my life. As I reflect, I think about how some of those are controlled by circumstances that were out of my control, while others were based on choices I made. I guess one shouldn’t dwell on the past, the coulda, woulda, shoulda. What we learn from past experiences helps us make better decisions in the future. As I reflect on the past and think about the future, I’m definitely determined to try my best to make choices that will have outcomes that I can be proud of when I reflect back 5-10 years from now.