Oh, this is gonna hurt...

Look at this kid… he has absolutely no idea what he has in store for me today. No plan, no intentions, just instinct and free will in it’s purest form. He didn’t wake up thinking “how can I drive Daddy to drink today?”, or “I am REALLY gonna pay him back for yesterday…”

He simply is a slave to his instincts, and utterly reactive to his surroundings. And that brings up and interesting point to ponder… maybe If I concentrate a little harder on his surroundings and activities I can illicit a different response?

And then I laugh. You gotta love the ego on me, thinking I could actually control chaos.

Today’s lesson in personal development:
Accept that the fit he throws today is not that bad, for 14 years from now, for some reason unknown to me today, he will tell me he hates me. And 14 years after that, he’ll be sorry for saying it.

Today, though, he loves me. And he loves me so much that I am the one he will want to hold him…while he screams his blessed head off.

Explain Yourself.

This year, I lost two.

Both were good...no, both were unmatched. They had achieved what I could only aspire to be.

Both made choices, and life turned unkind. They may have been flawed, but I never saw it.

Both leave questions, both leave holes.

They gave without knowing, and they are the easiest to depict...kind, gentle, infectious.

And if I had doubts before, they are compounded now by the stories of both.

For the life of me, I can't think how this is a better place now.

And I can't explain why others remain, though they are less, far less, than both.

Where is the sense in taking the best of us?

Why trust lesser beings to find meaning in the irrational?

Because we won't, will we?

If this isn't a clue, then please stand up, and explain yourself.

So, I'm 40.

During a recent bout with morbid curiosity, I spent some time with a Life Expectancy Calculator, trading facts about my physical and mental past for...a number. A number which absolutely plays into the category of, “If you don’t want to know, seriously, don’t ask.”

So lets have a look at my scoresheet of suspect decision making to-date:

I smoked for roughly 17 years until the pretty girl I was courting said she would never marry a smoker.

I’ve had a weight swing of roughly 40 lbs in the past 20 years, and the swing rarely comes down…that damn gravity…

I spend the better part of my career in traffic, and when you couple that choice with a fairly significant and nagging case of ADD, my odds of a fiery demise are pretty well astronomical as compared to the norm.

And, I love you Mom, but you’re British. Your DNA isn’t gonna do me any favors, nor is Dad’s. Unless…do you want to share any deep dark secret about abducting me from a Russian couple on a yogurt farm outside Vladivostok?

Computing…

72.

As in, holy shyte ........... 72.

Let’s set aside the really emotional stuff for now, like the chance of missing a father-daughter dance, a grand-birth, or leaving my wife so early that she feels she HAS to replace me, and deal with the purely selfish. Time is no longer endless, like it was when I was a kid... you couldn’t move the clock no matter how hard you tried… couldn’t make Santa come but once a year, couldn't stretch summer to feel like it lasted more than a couple of days. Now, especially with kids, time moves exponentially, horrifyingly so.

72 means I’m well past halftime, and I only just realized. And clearly I haven’t been paying attention, and therefore haven’t been planning. Haven't been learning my lessons, haven’t been applying them to avoid the ones to come. If there were ever a time to start to do it “right”, it’s now.

So, at the tender age of 40, I'll call this lesson number one. Get with it, already.