July 15, 2019

Decades ago, in another life, I got cornered at a cocktail party by a yuppie stockbroker who was working the room. I gathered, after ten minutes during which he talked and I listened, that his life consisted of work at his brokerage house, jogging, and virtually nothing else to hear him tell it. Finally, when he seemed to run out of steam and was scanning the room for his next victim, he said absently, “So, what do you do?”

What I did back then and what I do now, and all the many and varied things I’ve done in the years in between since I retired twenty-five years ago, have led many to think that I’m not playing with a full deck, that my elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top, that I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer… you get the picture.

Maybe I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree (okay, enough with the stupid analogies). The point I would argue is that a life well-lived is a life rich in experiences and memories. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a stockbroker and/or a jogger, but if that is all, if that is the sum total of what you are, you are drastically short changing yourself.

Stretching your spirit to embrace all the stuff you’ve had on your bucket list for too many years is a good thing. It will pay valuable dividends when you are too old to do much more than relive your memories.

Crazy? Possibly. Hell, probably. But I’m okay with that.