One day might never happen

IHAVE always loved the notion that everything happens for a reason, as a friend said once, it’s a very exciting way to live. But despite always loving the notion and it being exciting and all, I’m not sure I believe it. Sometimes truly awful things happen to lovely people and it’s hard to think of any reason which might explain that. So I settle for believing that things that happen can offer interesting new perspectives and it’s all in the interpretation.

My father joked/”joked” recently that he was going to have to start lying about my age because having such an elderly kid was ageing him. Around the same time social media offered me friendship and reminders from three people who are now dead, all of them decades before they or any of the many people who loved them were even close to being ready. Plus time is just rattling on and you realise that there is more of it behind you than in front of you, even in a best case scenario. My interpretation is that the mid-life crisis is the point where you decide to look at your life analytically or not and then to decide that you are going to change the things that don’t make you happy, or not. It sets the tone for the rest of your life and while the analysis part is ongoing over years, the decision can be fairly swift.

I’ve opted to make a good few changes and to leap at every chance, especially the things I had marked down for “One Day”. So I’m currently driving the US coast to coast, just because. I can’t really afford it but I find that I’m just as broke — it’s middle class broke, I’m not claiming poverty — when I don’t do things. Middle age is where you realise that “one day” isn’t really good enough any more. Either do it, or don’t because one day might never happen.