LIFE

When somebody else’s life passes yours by

Teddy Allen

The most recent time it happened was two days ago. How often does something like this happen to you?

Driving down the interstate, I was doing two things. One, I was wondering about things I should have done differently. Recounting Pilot Error. Two — and this is the fun one — I was adding names to The List Of People I’m Gonna Have To Kill One Of These Days.

A van passed me. Not just any van, but a rehab van. A van taking people in worse physical condition than I am — than most of us are —­ on a day trip. Some of them will eventually leave the facility; most of them, because of age or injury, never will.

I might be admitted by the end of the week, but right now, with a lot to do, dirty car needing gas, commitments to keep, and running behind, things didn’t seem so bad. Suddenly I didn’t have any problems.

I can’t keep that train of thought going for long unless I make it a point to think that way. Some people might be naturally grateful, naturally optimistic, naturally forward-thinking and able to let go of the past with ease; me, I’m not so sure.

Our elders have taught us better.

Satchel Paige said don’t look back because something might be gaining on you.

The writer of Genesis said although she’d been commanded not to, Lot’s wife looked back and turned into a pillar of salt. You turn into any condiment, and that’s a bad day.

And Anne Frank, a Jewish teen hiding from Germans, wrote that dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude. How does someone that young, living in an attic, know the human heart that well?

It doesn’t take so much, most of the time, to remind me how ungrateful I am. A flood or a mudslide in another hemisphere generally won’t do it. As you get older, death becomes such an everyday occurrence that it’s rare for even the ultimate End Of The Line to give me reason to count my blessings for longer than two seconds.

It takes something concrete and closer. A blind person tapping a stick and walking on a hot sidewalk in my town will do it. Or seeing, in the evening when I’m on my way to our little unpaid-for but comfortable home, a guy by the interstate exit holding a homemade cardboard sign. An old friend who’s sick, with no hope of getting better. Worse, a child in the same position.

Or those souls in the van, victims of time or bad luck or self-destruction, passing me by, going nowhere, telling me to slow down...

A friend of 70-something stood by me outside on a day clear and cool this week. He can’t go and go as he once did. Can’t play 18 holes as quickly. Or last as long in the heat. Stay up late and get up early all the time.

“But man, how can I have it this good?” he said. “I’ve still got two legs; I can walk out here. I can go see my grandkids play basketball. I’m able to go visit with friends who still want to have me. How blessed can one guy get?”

Regret is stronger than gratitude. The future is scary; the past is easier to traverse: we’ve been there already. Familiar territory. Even though some of it might not be pleasant, we find it easier to wander and wander there.

But ... if we keep going, radiate some kind of encouraging attitude based on blessings counted, who knows what good the next wave might bring?

It really is either that, or give up. When the going gets tough...

The first really cool snap sets us to thinking that Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Might as well get ready for it early, for a change. If God has left me and you down here, it must be for a reason. “Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy,” Anne Frank wrote all those years ago, living in hiding behind a bookcase.

Contact atteddy@latech.edu