Follow the reflections on the many chapters of life in this fictional story with morals, adventures, discoveries, and heartache as time passes quickly.
Follow the journey of what happens throughout a person’s life, waking up each day to an adventure of new discoveries, while time passes so quickly.
I wake up and cry for no particular reason. The room is empty, but I hear voices not too far away in the next room.
The start of a new day is beginning, and people are scurrying around. I recognize the smell of breakfast my mother is cooking, although it’s only baby food for me since I don’t have teeth yet.
Looking around the room with tremendous curiosity, I want to examine it more closely. So I manage to climb the bars of my crib and ease myself down to the floor. I made it safely without falling!
Crawling along the floor around the room, I examine everything I find along the way — not yet knowing how to put a name to them.
Oh, I recognize various objects, such as those two soft artifacts my mom puts on my feet when she dresses me.
I crawled to the corner. That’s an interesting place. I can lean against either wall or change my position against the other wall without much effort. Life is so simple.
Uh Oh! I see my mother coming into the room. She looks in the crib and seems somewhat shocked. Then, she calls out, “Where are you?”
I watch her as she looks around and quickly discovers me. It’s so nice to be taken care of with love — no worries in the world.
The world? What’s that anyway? I hear people talk about it. I wonder what exactly exists in that world beyond these walls. Is it as simple as everything I’ve been discovering?
The room is cold. The heat hasn’t warmed the house yet, as it’s set lower at night.
I’m told I will meet some other children today.
I’m wearing some strange new clothes, unlike anything I’ve ever worn in the past 1460 days of my life.
They drive me to a new location where I find other kids just like me. I can look right at them without straining my neck. They’re my height!
A lady instructed my parents to leave and let me get used to the place. She explains to them that it’s time for me to learn to be comfortable with others.
The following days are enjoyable, playing with the other kids, twirling around the merry-go-round, and watching the other kids fall off.
Sometimes I’m the one who falls off, but I get right back on. I never give any thought to the fact that I might be building confidence.
One of the taller people gives us socks to make into hand puppets. We put on a puppet show using our creativity with no input from those taller people. I think they call them adults.
Those puppets weren’t alive. What is the definition of life? At the tender age of five, I pondered that question as I manipulated my puppet to make it persuade other creatures to come together in an entertaining but manipulative drama.
Little did I know what I was doing. I had a passion for being happy and doing fun things.
Everything we did at that age was accepted without judgment. What a fantastic way to feel good about life!
Another school day. The teacher asks everyone to sit in the same seats they sat in yesterday. She seems a little pissed.
I can’t quite remember where I sat yesterday. I make my best effort, but I guess I picked the wrong one. My teacher came over to me and yelled, “You left a huge mess in your desk yesterday! Now you will be punished!”
I’m dragged off to the principal’s office and given some sort of lecture that I can’t remember. I guess I didn’t care to listen to what he was saying. But I learned a valuable lesson that day. Don’t listen to the ignorant.
I return to class just in time to learn how the alphabet is written in script form instead of printed. Wow! How artistic!
I wake up to a dark, stormy day. It was too miserable to go out.
In the evening, I was sitting in the living room with my parents. It was already dark outside, and suddenly, it was dark inside.
The first thing that came to my mind was that I didn’t want my elderly parents to get hurt walking around in the dark. So I told them to stay where they were, and I’ll go down to the basement and check the circuit breakers. I was already old enough to be no longer scared of the dark.
As I felt my way along the walls and down the staircase, I remember how once I was afraid to go down in that creepy basement alone. Hey, I even remember when we had fuses instead of circuit breakers.
I came back up the stairs to announce that everything was okay with our house, and it must be more than just us. I looked out the window to discover that the entire neighborhood was dark.
I jump out of bed with the eagerness to start a new day.
I’m excited that today I’m picking up my first car. I saved enough from various chores and my allowance to buy my own car. They were so much cheaper then.
My father knew I needed a car to drive to school when I started college. I guess he just trusted that I wouldn't get into an accident.
I don’t know what came first — his trust in me or what I did to earn that trust. It doesn’t really matter! It works either way.
I’m alone in my apartment. I moved out at the age of 20, so I could have privacy. My mother was always keeping too close an eye on me. My father trusted me, but there were times when I could have used some guidance with major life-changing affairs.
Oh well. I made my own judgment calls on many life issues. Some I'm glad I made, and some I regret. That's life.
It’s my first day going to work — my first real job after college.
I wanted to know when I needed to wake up to have time to get ready and get to work on time. So I calculated how long it takes to get to work and what time I needed to leave.
Based on that, I figured out when I needed to be in bed each night to get a full night’s sleep.
I followed that rule pretty well, so I was always punctual, and people knew they could trust me to be on time.
Nevertheless, I discovered that sometimes other things in life get in the way of following planned routines. We need to accept that and do our best with changes caused by external forces that we have no control over.
I need to rush to get the house in order. I’m having a bunch of friends over for a BBQ. It’s a lot of work to be the host. But it’s nice having friends over, and they reciprocate by inviting us to their parties.
I know how to be happy and feel alive. I’ve heard that I should treat every day as if it’s my last. We never know what’s around the corner.
Socializing with friends is an indispensable part of life. There are all kinds of friends from all walks of life. If nothing else, the meaning of life is to be there for one another. It’s a life worth living.
My head is spinning, and my girlfriend asks if I’m okay. I tell her, “I’ll be fine. I’m just a little dizzy.”
She gets up and prepares to go to work. After she leaves, I get out of bed to get ready for work too, but I discover I can’t stand up without falling.
The room is spinning around me, so I stay in bed, hoping I’ll be able to go to work soon. However, I never get out of bed and lose track of time.
Later, my girlfriend called for me at work. They told her I never came in. Of course, she was worried and called me at home to check on me.
I told her I couldn’t even get out of bed because of the dizziness, and she came home to take me to the doctor.
It turned out I had an inner ear infection that created vertigo. I recovered. It was just one of those things that happen in life.
The phone rings.
It’s my mother calling to tell me my father died in the middle of the night.
I say I’ll be right over, but for some reason, I follow my regular routine. I brush my teeth. I take a shower. I have breakfast. Then I leave to drive over there.
Feeling guilty for not just dropping everything and running, I asked myself, ‘Why?’
It’s possibly just my way of handling my emotions. Perhaps it’s some form of denial. Maybe it’s just okay.
I get out of bed and look in the mirror. I see an older man with gray hair and a face I don’t recognize.
On the surface, I understood what was happening, but I still asked myself…
“Where did the time go?”
“What have I accomplished?”
“How have I changed the world?”
Did I ever fulfill my dreams? Maybe some of them were never meant to be. Did I even want them anyway?
Without determining any answers to my thoughtful questions, I wondered why I never felt the passion again that I had many decades ago when I woke up knowing I was picking up my first car.
Why didn’t I experience that intense feeling of excitement ever again? An emotion that once made me feel alive!
I hadn’t felt that excitement even when I bought my first house. By then, the thrill of anticipation was over.
Where did the innocence of childhood go?
My eldercare aide adjusts my bedsheets. Then, I’m fed my morning breakfast, a light liquid soup I can easily swallow.
I’ve been bedridden for several weeks now. I hear people talking around me, discussing that they don’t think he’ll last long. Are they talking about me?
I think I need to treat this day as if it’s…my last.
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