Celebrating 25 Years of Greatness

A quarter of a century ago, in about the same amount of time it takes for a time out in basketball, I came through the curtains onto the world stage. I burst into the sun (though shaded by a tree). With a quick swipe of a jack-knife, my father severed the cord attaching my mother and I and I was, for the first time, an autonomous organism and distinct noun. I'm sure I was happy to be held -I don't actually remember. Though soon enough, I was whisked away in a picnic table cloth and driven to my new home.

Now the time is hard to imagine and it's speeding up! I know that this is but a cameo in the story of life itself but I hope the next 25 years will be as interesting as the first. So far I've made a good run of scattering myself around, seeing things, picking up rocks, finding useful things and disposing of what isn't, building fires and resting in shaded areas, picking up old habits again. If I've learned anything, it's that most things change. I owe my inspiration to all those that have taught me, joked with me, kept me in check, sat with me, questioned me and been my friend. I owe it to those that have come and gone and those who have stayed throughout.

Since that moment when I started, however blurry the lines may be, it has been a celebration of greatness, or at least that's a frame of mind. It is also all the small failures that reaffirm the importance of living well and the lesson of living once. Being born at a party, I was born to party and I'll do it til I die. Memento mori. With age though comes caution. Funny how we learn from mistakes after we've made them.

As it becomes increasingly difficult for me to remember names and as the telomeres of my DNA run out of pigment for my hair and protein for my skin, I will remember faces, words and deeds, if not through the functioning of my brain, at least through the yearning of my heart.

I also look forward to meeting all those that I haven't yet met. There is always something to look forward to! It is written somewhere, neither here nor there, that our fates will cross. One of the best parts is that none of us know if, how, or when...or why.

But even those of you that I may never meet, you will affect me indirectly. The world will form a new set of eccentricities, idiosyncracies and rules to defy everything I previously thought. Perhaps cell phones will go out of fashion or Australia will migrate to the northern hemisphere. Before I rot to dust I want to make it good, to watch children grow and old ones make glorious exits or graceful departures.

With you help, I'm sure we will.

PS-Happy Birthday to Jimmy

As for the song of the day, Crazy is it because it strikes me a good theme song about losing one's mind but gaining one's perspective. "Maybe we're crazy. Possibly...Think twice -that's my only advice." True words of wisdom! It seems a song about gaining wisdom from chasing your dreams and realizing that they'll always propell you farther into something you never expected in the first place. It's the Socratic conundrum: the more we know, the more we know we don't know.




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