A Quiet Milestone
I turned 65 today. No fireworks, no big to-do — just a quiet Friday evening with my wife and daughter and a cake after dinner at Red lobster. I’ve always been very low key about my birthday. When I was single I never celebrated it with others. I just preferred a quiet evening at home with a cake. However, this birthday felt different from the ones before it.
I made a short video about it on my personal IG page. In the background, I had Avicii’s “The Nights” playing, which felt very apropos. There is a line in that song that is the theme of this blog site and really hit home today – One day you will leave this world behind, so live a life you will remember.
I’m not writing this to tell you about my life. Sixty-five years, 37 of them in uniform and six more as a Government civilian, a legal career, a private pilot, a couple of failed marriages until I finally found the one God intended for me, and a business I’m still building with Buddy at my side. That’s just the shape of a person’s life, both good and bad as we are human and flawed, but it’s not really the point. The point is what turning 65 made me notice. I have a feeling most of you will notice the same thing eventually, if you haven’t already.
Someday Has a Ceiling
Here it is: I have lived a very full life and have good memories. A lot of them. But I don’t have unlimited time left to go make new ones.
That’s not intended as a morbid thought. It’s just the math of reality. 65 isn’t old the way it used to be, and I plan on being around and active for a long time yet. However, it’s also not the same as being 35, when “someday” still felt like it had no ceiling on it. “Someday” has a ceiling. It always did — I just wasn’t paying attention to it before.
What Actually Matters
Turning 65 made me think about what actually matters in the time I have left. For me, the answer is family. I was an only child raised by a single mom. She was my entire family growing up. She passed away last year at 87. Losing her has a way of sharpening this kind of thinking. It’s one thing to know, in the abstract, that time is limited. It’s another thing to lose the person who raised you and feel it directly.
I came across a research study a few years ago that stuck with me. Adults were asked what they remembered most from their childhood. Their answers weren’t the toys, presents or even a car in the driveway. It was the trips. The family adventures. The things they did together. Physical things faded; experiences didn’t. Same with mom. I don’t remember what she bought me nearly as well as where we went and what we did.
For me, I have an adult daughter with a husband and son of her own out in Arizona. A brother with two kids, and a cousin and her husband, all in the Kansas City area. I’m in Kentucky, so I don’t see any of them nearly as often as I’d like. My goal going forward isn’t complicated: be more present in their lives, and try to leave them the kind of memories that outlast me. Whether you’re married with a house full of kids or a single parent doing it on your own like my mom did, the same thing applies. The trips you take together, the time you spend with them, will do more for them — and for you — than anything you could hand them in a box.
Building the Plan
The plan going forward. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life waiting for the “right time” to see the places I still want to see, or telling myself I’ll get to it eventually. Eventually isn’t a plan. I’d rather build the plan now, while I still have the years and the health to actually use it. Buddy’s and my motto is even more relevant now – We travel because we would rather look back on life and say ‘we did that’ instead of ‘if only we had.’
If you’re reading this and you’ve got a place you’ve always meant to go, a trip you keep pushing to “next year,” we suggest you stop pushing it. None of us know how many “next years” we actually get. You don’t have to turn 65 to figure that out — I just happened to need the birthday to make me sit still long enough to hear it.
Go live a life you’ll remember. We intend to.
Buddy and Jordan