Epiphany

I’ve had 3 epiphanies in my life. One is too personal to talk about, at least if I'm not lying on a couch and paying someone a hundred dollars an hour. One was when I went to sleep one night as a tough guy and woke up in the hospital, a handicapped old man. The 3rd one was quite a few years ago and my life changed in a moment. That one is worth talking about.

I was driving my 30-minute commute from work in my Toyota pickup. I had NPR playing on the radio, but it was mostly background noise. I wasn’t paying it much attention until I heard the word “median” and my ears perked up. I’m a big fan of the median as a statistical tool. I’ve complained many times that the world has embraced the average because it’s far easier to calculate. To make my point, just take some data and throw in a few outlier high or low numbers and the average suddenly is a bad representative. The median handles this much better – just ask any real-estate agent.

This particular NPR segment was talking about the life-span of Americans. They talked about the variables like smoking and drinking or even taking part in high risk activities. I didn’t smoke or mountain climb. Maybe I’m Ok. They talked about genetics and I instantly started skimming my mind to put an age to every person in my family that had died. My mom died young, but my aunt Birdie lived to 99 years old. Maybe I’M OK.

When I heard the commentator say the median life expectancy of an American male, the number startled me! I was half of that age.

The number they gave was very precise – 76.58 years. I did a little more math in my head and it seemed that I was exactly half of that age. At that point, I was thoroughly freaked-out. I skidded my truck to the side of the freeway, threw my glove-box door open and fumbled through junk until I found my cheap little calculator (This was way before cell phones). I flipped my visor down and peeled off the little John Deere Tractor advertising calendar that was stuck underneath. As quickly as I could, I started counting days and pushing buttons. I changed my age into days, subtracted for my birthday, divided by 365 to get an actual decimal, and so on. I tried another way and another way. But no matter what math I did, the answer said that I was 38.29 years old. Yes, at that very moment I was exactly one half of my predicted life span!

Of course this rocked my world. How could this be? Where did the time go? I’ve got so much more I want to accomplish! I’ll never have time! Heck, given the report cards that the kids we’re bringing home, it’d likely take 30 years just to get them out of the house! I haven’t traveled the world. I haven’t written a book. I haven't mastered guitar. I haven’t gotten my 6-pack abs! My mind was racing through all the things I'd yet to do.

I finally settled down enough to get back on the road and drive home. I walked through the door and my wife instantly saw a distressed look on my face and asked,

"What’s wrong with you? "

I told her that I’m exactly half-dead, that’s what’s wrong with me! I explained everything that I had learned and explained my math to her. She was the high school Mathlete and I was hoping that I had made a few errors. It only took her about a minute with a calculator to confirm. Yes, I was exactly half dead!

Of course the revelation had rattled me and sent me into a lot of thinking and reminiscing. When you're sitting at what you perceive as the zenith of your life, it's a nice spot to look both forward and back. It's like being on the top of a mountain -- you can see everything. Looking back, you can really see and embrace the beautiful memories. With that view, you see everything that you’ve done in your life. But looking forward from that spot, it’s all blank. That’s weher all of the things that you haven’t done comes into vision. Yes, it’s blank, but you know that somewhere out there is the end -- the final dot on your timeline --- and it’s getting closer with every heartbeat and breath.

For a week or so, the new knowledge never really left my mind. While I drove my commute, while I worked, and even while I slept, there was an hourglass slowly losing its precious sand. I’m not a person that makes lists, but the whole ordeal seemed to have stuck a bullet-pointed sticky note on my brain, with everything I had yet accomplished.

Somewhere in the days ahead, I finally reasoned that since the whole bomb was dropped on me from the mysterious Cosmos via an NPR segment, there must be a positive message in there somewhere! There must be a reason for such pointed knowledge. It consumed me for a while. But soon I realized that what was in front of me, long or short, was 100% opportunity. What was behind me was done and written, but in front of me was nothing but wide-open space, ready to be created and lived. I slowly stopped looking at the impending horizon and started looking down. Down was today and I needed to grab it!

Since then, as trite as it sounds, I have really tried to seize every day. Yes, I still plan for the future, but I don’t let a day go by that I don’t try to wring every drop of enjoyment and accomplishment out of it. I’m fortunate that my wife has the same adventurous spirit. When we do look toward the horizon, it's not to see if the dreaded end is getting closer, but to see what we can plan next!

No one is promised tomorrow and age is just a number.

Carpe Diem my friends!