Better than the First Half?!

Day Five into this blog, and I am still giving thought to the precise words to define what this blog is all about.  My problem (among many) is that I often try to find a hundred words to articulate what I could say in ten.  I’ve read dozens of other blogs, varying from subtle wit to intellectual depth and clarity, and I want to emulate this one or that one.  I want to have something meaningful to say, something insightful, inspiring, thought-provoking… or even just plain funny.

I want to find a hook to hang this blog on.  I’ve got the title; it actually came to me with very little effort.  I shouldn’t be surprised, though, as I’ve spent the last six weeks digging deep into my psyche and extracting truths about myself that I had never previously considered.  While I’d like to think that I’m still in my first half of life (I’d like to live longer than 82!), symbolically I recognize that I have begun the second half.

“The first half of life is spent in longing for the second - the second half in regretting the first.” ~ French Proverb

I can see where that saying would be true if a person was not careful.  True, we often reach a point in life where we are reaping the benefits and the consequences of the choices we made or didn’t make in our earlier years, but it is not as if we’re then at a place where we can only move forward by fixing our eyes forlornly at the past.  To live with that mentality as we age is to pretty much start digging our own graves, for were it true, the best days of our lives would a rapidly fading image in our rearview mirror.

Instead, I think that we should periodically take a moment to acknowledge our past mistakes, make amends where we can, grieve where we cannot, learn something from them, and then walk boldly into the sunshine of the new day, having grown as a person in the process.  We can’t change our pasts, to be sure, but as long as we continue to have breath in our lungs, we remain responsible for our today and for all of our tomorrows.

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow belongs to God. So live today by the Grace of God and do good unto others.” ~ Unknown

I don’t know how long I will continue this blog, but for now, it is a loose chronicling of the commitment to myself to not spend my next forty or so years wallowing in sentimentality and regret over the past, but to build each day upon the foundations and memories that have comprised my first forty years.  To title this blog “Better than the First Half” is not to imply that the first half was anything less than wonderful; I’m just stating my hope and conviction that my best years still lie ahead of me!

In hindsight, I probably could have said all that in ten words or less….