Done

For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be. What is once well done, is well done forever. - Henry David Thoreau

Once you reach the age when you have grown or nearly grown grandchildren you realize your life is not just chapters of a single book but separate and independent volumes. Volume I covers your childhood with your birth family. Volume II recounts your youth and school years as you step out into new social circles. Volume III delineates your young adult life, including your own marriage and family. Volume IV is really just a wrap up and can only be completed in epitaph. I had this epiphany, in a recent melancholy moment, while searching through listings in a classmate website. I was initially excited to find the names of several old friends, (including a guy I thought I was going to marry), read their profiles and see what they look like now. Interesting experience mentally replacing your last image of a person at age 18 with one 44 years older. A mind boggling experience. Some things you just have to work through.

For a few seconds I considered going beyond the initial sign up and adding my own profile and latest photo, thinking someone from April’s Life-Volume II might email me. And then that’s when it struck me that I don’t think I am ready to reopen that book. As I read the profile of the guy I came close to eloping with in my senior year, I was delighted and surprisingly relieved to see that he had done good with his life. He joined the Marines and survived Viet Nam, he graduated from college, he married, had two children and five grandchildren. He continued on with making music, which was something important to his youth, and is now a computer business analyst for IBM. Most significant to me is that he has an outreach program working with troubled youths. What I know, from this advantage point of hard earned wisdom, is that, if we had married at so young an age, Volume III for both of us would likely have been completely different and possibly disastrously difficult. In the harsh light of that reality I couldn’t see the point in rehashing any of it, or investing the time in a potential email exchange of catching up or reminiscing about things that only really mattered and belong in Volume II. And that applied as well to any of the other classmates/friends of that part of my life now so long ago done.

There is certainly a time and place for remembering but I have always been a doer driven to do and then I quickly move on to do something else. I fully understand why the elderly, in the closing pages of their Volume IV, depend so heavily on memories and what is past but I’m not quite there yet. I’m still doing, though admittedly slowed down quite a bit. I have a few more things on my Bucket List to put in Volume IV and precious little time and waning strength to do them. No use wasting a minute of what I have remaining wallowing in retrospect.

Ultimately, because I believe in God’s divine hand in my life outline, I have no regrets about the chapters that have already been closed if for no other reason I can make more prudent choices now because of the mistakes, typos, misspellings, bad grammar and clumsy construction in those early pages of my life. Older but wiser now, I am well aware that which remains yet to be written should be carefully considered and possibly pre-edited before laying down the ink.

I think I prefer to stay focused on Volume IV rather than try to update that which is well and done.