Future Events

A few days ago a book I am reading asked me to
list five things I want to accomplish in the next
20 years.
Picking it up off the dresser next to my bed last
night, I flipped through the pages and reviewed
the what I had written.
1) Kayak the Puget Sound for a week
2) Learn to rock climb
3) Win Nationals
4) Spend a summer at the beach
5) Take a train across Canada
Not a very imaginative, nor a very exciting list.
No travel to foreign locals, no wild adventure in
the jungles of Borneo, no get together with my
favorite rock star.
No mention of getting a tattoo.
That's a given.
I want my grandchildren to see I lived a life
where I colored outside the lines at least once
in awhile.
That type of thought is on my mind more
and more lately.
Coloring outside the lines.
A return to adolescence?
A return to the question of my teen aged self,
what's it all about Alfie?
Back then the years stretched out in front of me
like the contents of the Milky Way.
Barely visible on a clear night, you knew all
those countless years where ahead of you but
you couldn't fathom the distance involved.
It was spooky.
Now, the view has changed, I've added a few
stars of my own to the galaxy of human experience,
and the night sky beckons with a different call.
It's still spooky, only in a different way.
What do you want your life to be about now?
Same question but without the endless days
and nights to fill, or waste at my discretion.
Bonnie Raitt's song, "Nick Of Time" comes to
mind.
" I see my folks are getting old and I watch
their bodies change, I know they see they same
in me and it makes us both feel strange.
No matter what you tell yourself, it's what we
all go though.
Those lines are pretty hard to take when they're
staring back at you"
Oh yeah Bonnie. You got that right.
I find it funny that I was originally told about that
song many years ago by a friend I hung out with
at the small local airport where I was a glider pilot
and gave rides to strangers on hot summer afternoons.
He was half way to 60, a pilot himself and thinking
about retiring. He was also thinking about the years
that were no longer endless and facing the fact that
life is short, and his was getting shorter.
Don looked fine to me, his face was getting craggy, but
he was active, rode a motorcycle, flew a variety of planes
and was learning to fly a helicopter.
I didn't get his concern.
I was also twenty years younger than he was.
From where I stand now, looking back, I get it.
The press of what was always there.
For all of us, of every age.
Limited time.
One of Don's favorite sayings was, " this isn't a dress
rehearsal"
This is it.
All you get.
Make it good.