Forward Motion

This article is a reprint from a column I pen each month for the website of my high school class www.DanMccarty70.com.  While it has been over four decades since the 400+ of us exploded from the halls of Dan McCarthy High and into our lives, today over 250 of us still meet on a regular basis in cyberspace to remember, smile and stay in touch.  I hope you enjoy my Ramblings.

 

Forward Motion

“In the end, it will all work out, and if it has not worked out, then it must not be the end.”

This line from a wonderful movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, focused on a group of seven down on their luck British retirees who traveled to India to stay in what an Internet ad touted as a newly restored luxury hotel. After their arrival, they find that the “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” was not luxurious, certainly not the best, in fact barely a hotel.

This movie caused me to ponder the many twists in this journey we have trod for now more than six decades. I was struck by how the seven responded, each viewing what was obviously less than they had expected. Some were angry and demanded a resolution to their dilemma, while others seemed quite excited about the adventure on which they had embarked.

 

I could not help thinking of a quotation from Aldous Huxley: “Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you." If I’m honest with myself, I must admit, that over the past forty years, many of the highest points of my life immediately followed an event that had been unexpected, untimely, and certainly at the time unwanted.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am certainly not a gray-haired, slightly rotund version of Tony Robbins, always seeing the half-full glass, never having a down day, and waking each morning with a bluebird perched on my shoulder. But, like most of you, I have acquired a bit of wisdom that comes only with age. That wisdom has taught me to fear less while simultaneously grabbing the reins of the chariot of my life with a simple understanding that, of all the things I have feared the most in my life, now and then, one actually happened.

As past decades begin to stack like cordwood, life’s aches, pains, and problems can become more frequent and, yes, more severe, which is why it is imperative that we all commit to exercise the six inches between our ears more today than when youth’s vigor made it easier to ward off life’s blunders.

 

In our twenties and thirties, we perceived ourselves as indestructible with a passion for life that made all things seem possible. Today, I have better learned the merits of patience. After all, patience does not replace passion; patience is simply passion tamed. So, when we are disappointed that things in our life did not turn out the way we expected, it can be helpful to remember that they seldom do. And I do believe with every fiber in my body that the only real failure is the failure to try and that true success is not measured by the size of our bank account, rather in how we deal with these inevitable disappointments that are part of life. After all, our only real job is to get up, suit up, and do our best; nothing else matters.

It is normal from time to time to wish for the wide-eyed innocence of youth to return, if just for a day. But no amount of longing can bring back those days. Like a faded photograph or torn ticket from the Magic Carpet Sweetheart Dance, pressed neatly in a scrapbook, it can conjure up memories of days past, but that’s it. The good news is that living in today, living in the present, enables us to chart our course forward, free to embark in any direction we choose. But this takes forward motion. Planning alone is not enough. Those plans must be put in action just as the steering wheel on the boat is useless until the propellers are engaged—forward motion is needed to steer a course.

 

Nothing drives me crazier than to hear someone speak as if his or her life is over. “I’m too old… Not at my age... Maybe when I was younger… As Hillary Cooper so eloquently said, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” I, for one, am determined to have my breath taken more times than I can count.

 

To me, getting older is not about fretting over drooping this and sagging that, the inability to read without my bifocals, or being a member of the 50-50 club (the club for all men over fifty who need to go to the bathroom every fifty minutes). For me, it is the fear of being marginalized, of not mattering, of not having anything to contribute. And I, for one, promise on this issue of mattering not to go quietly into the night. Whether in my work, in my family, in my church, or maybe just by helping a friend in need, I am determined to matter, to contribute, and when my day comes, I am determined to be missed, to create my own little void in the world.

 

As I’ve said several times in these ramblings, I am certain that I get more enjoyment out of writing these ramblings than the collective lot of you get from reading them. But I must admit the fuel that feeds my passion to write can be as simple as a few words in an e-mail telling me that a particular rambling made someone smile. Talk about easily stroked. Oh, well, c’est la vie.

But everything in life comes with a price. Even the enjoyment I get out of penning these ramblings for my high school class each month is tempered with the unpleasant task of being the keeper of the In Memory log and usually being among the first to be notified when another of our classmates reaches the end of his or her journey. Although this unpleasant task makes me more cognizant of how truly precious life is, I refuse to allow the loss of a friend to rob me of all the joy I know still lies ahead. I will not focus on what part of my life is in the past, only what joy and excitement still lie ahead.

 

Yet, this ringside seat to the cycle of life, in itself, has made me more grateful. As I’ve already told you, just a couple of short weeks ago, I lost my eighty-four-year-old father, Richard Sr. And as fate would have it, today is the one-year anniversary of the loss of my mother. Although I miss them, those two recent clouds in my life has a brilliant and unforgettable silver lining.

 

How many people can say that more than forty-three years after graduating from high school, not one, but five, of their classmates would drive more than an hour to attend those two funeral services just because of their love for me. Those wonderful friends—Jim Lester, Doc McKinney, Bobby Harrell, and Ricky and Beanie Silverstein—will never know how their display of support and love for my family and me moved me to the core of my being.

 

So, instead of looking to the future and worrying about what lies ahead, let us all understand that the only thing certain about our future is that it will be different. Let us resolve to drink in all that life has to offer, not in dainty little sips, but in big messy gulps, with the excess of all we cherish streaming down our chin and pooling at our feet. Let us work hard, so one day, many years from now, many will miss us.

If we do this, be confident, my friends, that in the end, it will all work out, and if it has not worked out, then it must not be the end.

 

Keep Rollin'

Richard