The End
Here we are. The end of another year. Yeah. I’ve done 77 and ½ of these things. Next year it will be 60 years since I graduated high school. This year was the fiftieth anniversary of my college graduation, which ought to tell you something about the curve of my academic career, but that’s another story. Suffice it to say I’m leaving a lot of years in my wake. Although lots of my memories still feel fresh, my time in high school and college chief among them. Yesterday, too.
But that’s the way life works if you’re lucky and I feel lucky. My life is a compendium of serendipitous events, places we’ve moved, people I’ve meet, paths I’ve crossed. Entire groups of friends are based on chance. I move to a new city and attend a new high school. A girl walks into a club where I’m playing. I attend a party in the Texas countryside. I’m a silver ball in a bagatelle, bouncing off pins, collecting friends, making my way to the bottom, gathering little bits of inertia to keep me going.
It's a fun ride. I can’t see the bottom yet, but I imagine it’s coming. Thankfully, we mostly live in the dark, with just enough light to see what’s happening today, what happened yesterday, and what might happen in the days ahead. And might is a powerful word. It has a misleading surety to it, especially when coupled with a sketchy understanding of probability. I think I have a good grasp of the latter but I’m still having trouble with might, especially when coupled with something I desire. So, there’s still room for improvement, even after all these years, and that seems promising.