In 100 Years, Will You Regret This Night on the Porch?

As I write this, we haven’t quite yet reached that moment in the year when I declare that the rest of our wonderful year, and our wonderful life, is right ahead of us, if we’ll only endeavor to not miss it.

But from here I can see the signs, and I can feel: it’s almost porch season.

I’ve spent a lot of time sitting on my porch at night, as the many FB posts of my feet in the foreground and the porch in the background attest to.

Fig. A: I’ll spare you the feet this time.

Some nights, most nights if I’m being honest, I had a few drinks sitting out there. And it may seem like I wasted, and even shortened, some part of my life out here.

But did I? Sitting on my porch, contemplating the stars and life in general, has been peaceful, glorious, beautiful, relaxing, sublime… I’ve traded hours I would have spent sleeping for this time listening to the music I love, thinking about friends and family I love, watching a full moon pick her way through the branches of our crepe myrtle into the clear sky.

Perhaps I have lost time, days, maybe months or even years, choosing to sit here and enjoy this one life, but… we had a joke when the kids were kids, shouting “IT’S NOT A COMPETITION!”

It really *isn’t* a competition. There isn’t some ideal life that I should have had if only I’d have lived perfectly and virtuously and according to the recommended guidelines.

I won’t come skidding into my grave in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up and totally worn out, as Mr. Thompson advocated. But neither will I arrive safely in a well-preserved body.

Like most people, I’ll arrive unsure, having done the best I could to strike the balance between the immediate joys of the day (or night) against the longer-term interests of my family and friends (and of mine).

Of course, this isn’t a post about just sitting on the porch. It’s really about the myriad things we would like to do in life, and the myriad reasons we (and others, especially) come up with for why we should NOT do those things, and instead should live a piously disciplined life, focused only on our work or on our list of chores until the day is over, then sleep and repeat.

We seem to live in black-and-white, Dear Abby world where there is constant pressure to follow the counsel of those wiser, or with more medical credentials, or with a self-improvement / productivity blog, or with a newspaper column about the X number of science-based ways to improve and (of course) lengthen our lives. If we are good and we do as we are told / expected, we’ll reach some idealized, optimized, blue-ribbon-winning expression of a perfectly virtuous yet fulfilling life that is NEVER cut unexpectedly short by an undeserved terminal illness.

Nope. That’s not how it really works.

What we actually do is the best we can, just like the 100 billionish other people who’ve walked this planet before us.

Then we’ll be gone. And all of our earnest efforts to measure up to… what?… will be lost to time.

But we’ll have had this night on the porch, feeling a breeze on our face as a magnificent silver disk traces her arc across the night sky.

Did you like this post? Please share it!, using the socials buttons below.