Living Life to its Fullest Potential

In my journey through this life, I've learned much. Life has been good to me.

Yes, life is good. In the five decades I've lived so far, I've come to realize how we determine our perception of life. As a kid it's great, we play with our friends and are typically happy. I look back at those times and think would I want to do it again? To most of my school mates I was the oddball, I wasn't good at sports, shy, and usually the one the bullies picked on. I resented my parents for forcing me to go to church on Sunday Morning and Evening then again for Wednesday night service. I wanted to do what I pleased and that was to have fun, or what I thought was fun, with my friends. In my teens, this led me down a path of pleasing others instead of listening to myself. I wanted friends and would do just about anything, kinda sickening looking back at it. There was a time period of three years which could have ended my life at it's desire

Most everyone has this period in our life that we become the prodigal child. I think life throws it on us to show us what we're made of. Sooner or later we come out of it and move on. As we do life throws at us another couple decades of family life and raising our own children (this could be a spouse or mate if you've elected not to have children) and making a living. The as the kids grow up and leave home grandkids begin to arrive on the scene( at least usually we can take responsibility for them when we want then turn them back over to their parents).

As we progress we often look back and ask would we have done it differently? Some times the answer is yes and sometimes it is no. As I reminisce which I have a tendency to do, the answer I usually come up with is if I hadn't lived those experiences what would I be like today? Yes there are times in my past that I could have made other choices but the ones I made were important lessons in life which molded the physical being I call myself. What experiences I faced I see as valuable lessons, some good some not so good at the time.

Overall five decades is a short span of time and yet five decades ago the average life span was six to eight decades. To view life from my parents perspective retirement was sixty, today our second life begins at sixty and we may easily have another sixty years or more. Part of this is due to advances in science, some due to habitat change, some industrialization, and a host of other things which we take for granted. So I ask myself again, would I really want to do things over, and again the answer is no.

Some time in the past I started picking up what is now a habit of choice called making the best of what life throws at us. When I run with life and it's surprises amazing things happen, when I revolt and resist then what may seem as a large problem turns ugly. Now I am not one for surprises, I do like the comfort of this life and change is something of a questionable possibility (when it's in my favor). I admit comfort is an addiction I have as so many of us do, it's simply out of the question till life shows us differently. When it does, it is usually trying to teach us something for our own good.

For instance, in the early eighties, with a wife and two children, I lost my job in a economic downturn. At the time I thought it was the worst thing that could happen and was very pissed at someone whom I once worked with/for. It was a small private business and the owner left early the day I was let go. I couldn't believe it happened to ME, why me when they had hired someone new only 3 months earlier, I had seniority. It took me a couple of weeks to finally see the light and in that same week I received a letter from my old boss explaining why he left early and why the decision was made to let me go. Huh, real help at the time and I struggled to find a full time job in one of the coldest winters the midwest had seen in years. As spring moved in, I already knew what I had to do, and it was against everything and everybody's thoughts about what I should do. It was time for me to packup and head to Atlanta.

When I got to Atlanta, I was staying with my in-laws, who had invited me to come look for work. The first thing I did was to look for a job to keep me supported while I found a permanent job. I did on the very first day and with in a week had been interviewed several times and found a job in my chosen field. When you pay attention to what your gut instincts are telling you things generally go much better. What had taken 7 months of searching resulting with only slight interest and promises took less then 2 weeks with positive results and a Job that I've now been at for more than a quarter century and love it. Oh, by the way, a month after I came down to Georgia, my wife who was still in the midwest, called and said I had a job up there at Searle Pharmaceutical which I wanted badly at the time. It was tempting to just go back and work there but my instinct told me "no". Turned out to be a wise choice to stay as that particular plant closed within the next two years. I could go on with other instances where my resistance to change lead me deeper into trouble but those I'll keep for another day.

To say it again, "Life is Good", it may seem the pits or it may be we're on top of the world. Either way is only our perception of the past. As I enter my second life (fifty plus), I think I'll set my sights on hitting the "Hundred and Fifty Club", retirement is out of the question I have to much fun loving life and what it presents to me. "Good" or "Bad" is only how I perceive it and how I react to it. Life is too short, have fun living today, we're not guaranteed anything in life except for this present moment.