I did this post the morning after my 50th birthday. While personal, it also might shed some light on the hope of being remarkable:
I finished my first 50 years of life last night. If life insurance companies are to be believed, I'm not likely to be alive at the end of another 50. The first 50 were the years of youth. The next 50 will likely be the long, slow process of death setting in. Yet I feel perversely good right now.
Why? I'm not so sure. But I think that it has something to do with being young enough to still have health but old enough to have experience. I'm working on some cool stuff right now, including a book entitled the Original Green and the Mysteries of Real Sustainability. The book connects a lot of dots for me... dots I'd never have been able to connect ten years ago. Earlier years were primarily about collecting wisdom... but I hope the ones to come will be more about doing something useful with that wisdom.
Years ago, I heard a folk singer belting out "I Wish I Was 18 Again." I don't. What if I missed even one of the keys that have unlocked mysteries for me recently? Most of the story couldn't be told without each of those doors being unlocked. I'm happy here, even if it's on the backside of a long (I hope) downhill slope that ends at the grave. Here's hoping that the knowledge of that destination might provide continual invigoration to connect more dots into something useful within the days that remain.
