He was in his early 70’s and his body was almost done. He had congestive heart failure and a crippling neurological disease. He was feeling a bit down.
A mixture of frustration and phlegm tainted his words.
“You spend all of your life learning how to do something, and being able to afford to do something, and then you can’t do it anymore”.
He was a skilled trumpeter and an avid outdoor’s man. Yet he could no longer control his fingers to play any music. And he could barely walk let alone hike the outdoors.
Life is made up of windows of time. A window of a couple decades is all you have, to enjoy the skills it took decades to develop. And it takes many decades to accrue the wealth to do the things you want. But age quickly detracts from your ability to live life as you once did as a young man. That which was once taken for granted quickly extends beyond our ability to grasp.
Much of life’s enduring endeavors are meaningless and of little lasting value. It took him 20 years to get the tools and know-how to rebuild a car engine. “All that time spent, and for what”? He wondered, as he sat on a recliner.
