On The Ship of What Could Have Been

As the New Year begins:

A lot of us in life are waiting for our ship to come in but are unwilling to swim out and meet it.

Some of us if we saw a man drowning ten feet from shore would throw him a five foot rope and say, “Well, I was willing to meet him half way.”

Many of us rather than signing up for self-accountability are busy signing self-excuse notes.

But little is more depressing than those of us who have signed aboard as sailors on the ship to what could have been, and anchored ourselves on the HMS Sorrow. Too bad, too often because no matter where we are in our time line, even a calendar knows its days are numbered.

Any of us with an ounce of imagination can be self-pitying dreamers imagining the distant shores of what could have been. But the truth is there is no could have been. There is no tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. Or to put it more precisely, when tomorrow shows up, it arrives as today.

Nobody dies tomorrow. No one has a tombstone that reads: “He died tomorrow.”

Who you want to be begins right now. The caring you promise yourself or others is only caring promised.  And a promise of love with a delivery date but no delivery leaves too many hearts standing at the door with only a tracking number for company. In the land of what could have been every promise is born broken.

If the Wizard of Oz taught us anything it is that the pot of gold over the rainbow is the treasure within you. Count on it and count it. As the New Year begins, begin here, begin with you, and begin now.

Noah benShea