Two guys squint to see
~ travel through time(s), seeing what’s far gone, and far ahead
Every day is magic for someone.
Every day is tragic for someone else.
Most days are of little consequence to most of us. Until they aren’t.
A child’s first step, a parent remembers.
One remembers forever, the other soon forgets. Times billions.
Across every age, every street, every country.
Life is equal parts what we get to do and what we regret we didn’t.
We imagine endlessly as children. We create without instruction, until someone instructs us to stop. Studies suggest creativity peaks around age five. After that, school, rules, and seriousness take over.
We can reclaim some of it later.
But that’s a choice many choose to avoid.
I’ll sit across from an old friend, not my oldest or longest, but forty years is a good stretch. Our friendship has had distance and closeness, twists and turns, periods of silence and bursts of laughter.
We’ve seen the gritty parts of life, not always at the same time, but we’ve seen each other through it. That’s the advantage of a friend with history; you borrow their lens and they borrow yours.
I’m catching up from conference fatigue, deadlines, and the endless conveyor belt of work. But none of that matters when the calendar opens for a long lunch. There are never too many of those, and never too many friends this good.
Don’t mistake us for polished men. We’re as flawed as rejects off an assembly line. But here we are, two old guys with bifocals, squinting at what’s ahead, while still able to see what’s right here, up close and personal.
Perspective, it seems, comes late in life. Every day is someone’s big day, but you only get to keep the ones you choose to notice.
Writing about this seems too light, too ‘not focused’, and I don’t care whether it matters to anyone - it matters to JJ. It matters to me.
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