stone savage

“Accept the pain, cherish the joys, resolve the regrets; then can come the best of benedictions — ‘If I had my life to live over, I’d do it all the same.” - Joan MacIntosh

No lie, when I was twenty-two years old I had a Proactive Mid-Life Crisis. Seriously, I’m not kidding! I remember sitting in a park watching butterflies, ants, and lady bugs when I just happened to look around me and saw a fifty year old man who obviously wanted to believe he was still in his thirties. He looked ridiculous. I watched him for a while wondering what he thought he was really gaining; when I realized all he was doing was trying to feel better about the choices he’s made in life.

It occurred to me - one day I will be in my fifties and I will very likely have a mid-life crisis. One day I will probably look ridiculous trying to seem hip and youthful. I will most likely try to recapture my youth and try to do things I always wished I had done. Now, of course I couldn’t know at the tender age of twenty-two that I would go through such a thing, but based on how many people go through it I figured there was a good enough possibility that I should really give it some thought. I started asking myself what sorts of things might I wish I had done, or done differently, when I looked back over my life in twenty or thirty years.

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