*Post title comes courtesy of “A Fond Farewell” by Versus the World*
In my last post I touched on my illness a bit. That was by far the longest I have ever been sick, but after the doctor gave me antibiotics, I started to recover. That’s what made last week’s scare even scarier.
Last Thursday, I finally felt good enough to run my usual three miles. At an average speed of 8 minutes per mile, it wasn’t as brisk of a pace as I would have preferred, but the fact that I was able to make it through the entire run was particularly encouraging. That afternoon, I got a call from the doctor’s office. All the receptionist told me was “The doctor looked at your x-ray results. Come in as soon as possible.”
I have long prided myself on my optimism, but when you hear something like that, even the most optimistic of people can begin to fear the worst. I had no idea what I had. Tuberculosis? Cancer? Was I terminal? I didn’t know, and it scared me.
Fortunately, what happened was that the x-ray indicated that in addition to the pinkeye and strep that I had, I also had pneumonia. The doctor had prescribed me a strong antibiotic for the strep and wanted to see if the antibiotic also wiped out the pneumonia. I took a follow-up x-ray, and the pneumonia was cleared out of my lungs.
As I sat in the room waiting for the doctor to appear, my life began to flash before my eyes. Actually, it was more of the things I had not yet done that flashed before me. I thought about my lack of wife and children. I thought of my unfinished literary masterpiece. I thought about the fact I still haven’t made it to Pittsburgh. I was troubled by the things that have yet to (and may not) occur.
Now that I’ve been given a clean bill of health and a new lease on life so to speak, it has allowed me to look at things in a slightly more rational light. No, I’m not as young as I once was. I’m closer to 30 than I am to 20. College is fast becoming a distant memory. It used to be only days that would pass between seeing my closest friends. Now years separate our gatherings. There is a lot that I hoped to accomplish by now that hasn’t happened.
However, I can’t create my timetable based on the lives of others. Yeah, my younger sister is married and out on her own halfway across the country. Yeah, some of my peers are in the jobs of their dreams and/or have families of their own. That’s great for them. But I have to stop living on their timetables. Life doesn’t always happen when we want it to. If it did, I’d be on step 4 or 5 of my #SixStepsAway plan. In some cases, the best we can do is make sure we’re at least pointed in the right direction. If we are, we can hope that we’ll get there someday. Therefore, I live in hope that she'll come around soon enough and that I'll be able to provide for my family while working my dream job.
That said, there are other goals or “bucket list items” that are within my control. If there’s one thing that this health scare taught me, it is to live in relentless pursuit of the things I want to accomplish so that the man I am and the man I want to be are one in the same. I may not be a kid anymore, but I’ve got a lot left in the tank. I’m ready to be viewed for my output rather than my potential.
