Old Man Pondering

As expected, my article on myths, cults, and religions shook loose a fair number of responses. Several readers wanted to know what I actually believe, which tells me they had some difficulty reading past the parts that stepped on the toes of whatever they were raised to hold sacred. Fair enough. Rather than simply share beliefs, I thought I’d do something more useful: tell you what seventy-four years of living, losing, and eating very well has actually taught me.

I learned that opening my eyes to another dawn was a gift no currency could purchase. It meant another opportunity to love differently, to correct a mistake, to start over, to taste or see or feel something I never had. If you can draw a full breath, recognize a face, or feel the warmth of another’s hand in yours—do not dismiss your life as mundane. The small graces you overlook today may be the very things you ache for tomorrow.

I learned that even when the world narrows to a hospital bed or a quiet farmhouse at dusk, the simple act of choosing to lift a glass of Kentucky bourbon or turn a page in a book means the ink hasn’t dried. You might not be able to change the weather, but you can still set your own course.

I learned that money could buy a king’s mattress, silk sheets, and a solid oak bedframe, but it cannot purchase the quiet grace of a mind at ease. I have lain awake in New York hotel penthouse suites, listening to the hum of the city that never sleeps because I couldn’t, while on my worst nights back on the farm, exhaustion pulled me under as soon as my head touched the pillow. If you can close your eyes tonight without rehearsing regrets or dreads, you already possess a fortune that billionaires barter their souls for.

My scars are not proof of defeat, but a map of where I have been. They remind me that pain happened—and I walked on anyway, and I stopped paying interest on sorrows that had not yet come due. Anxiety is a tax on moments you will never live, paid in the currency of the present.

I no longer overlook my wife’s hand finding mine during a film she has already seen twice, just to feel the contact. I no longer overlook the grandchildren who fall asleep against my shoulder. I no longer overlook the dog who repositions herself against my leg each time I shift in the chair. My greatest blessings had faces and names and phone numbers I already had memorized. I was simply too busy dialing other numbers to notice them standing in the room.

I learned that a man doesn’t need to see the whole staircase to take the first step, though I did fall down one not long ago and broke my humerus into 6 shattered pieces. I’ve stood at crossroads in life where the fog was so thick I couldn’t see ten feet ahead—no map, no signpost, just the weight of my own shoe soles on pavement. The bravest things I ever did was to take steps without a map—moving across the country multiple times, buying that racehorse, asking a woman to dance, having our 5 children, planting an oak sapling I know I will not live to see mature.

I learned that I had hurried through a thousand mornings—the steam rising from my coffee mug, the particular way the light fell across the kitchen table at 6 a.m., I missed the weight and warmth of a fresh biscuit in my hand, I never paused to savor. I missed the half-finished sentences my wife began over dinner, the stories I meant to return to tomorrow, which became conversations we never had.

Before I start petitioning the universe for a better parking spot or a winning lottery ticket, I now take a breath and do a quick inventory. Lungs: still inflating. Heart: still thumping away, if slightly out-of-tune. Family: miraculously hasn’t disowned me yet. The sun came up again this morning. You see, you don’t need a lightning strike or a Publisher’s Clearing House van to find meaning; it’s usually hiding in plain sight, right between your mismatched socks and that half-eaten bag of chips you forgot about. So maybe stop sprinting for a second. Look at what’s right in front of you. It’s probably more interesting than your phone.

Because someday, you may realize that what you were desperately searching for was there all along—in the creak of the back porch screen door, in the smell of coffee already made when you came downstairs, in the dog’s tail, in the hand that found yours in the dark.