Born as Many, Die as One

The life of every man starts full and bursting with the promise of innumerable possibilities. Life, in its quiet and relentless way, carves us down from the many to the one. We choose our paths, sometimes with clear-eyed certainty, other times with blind faith. Each choice comes at the expense of all the others we could have made, each step closes off another route that could only begin at that moment in the past.

Every step leads to the final step, where the infinite paths have dwindled to the single story that will be told after we are gone. It is exactly one story and it can't be changed.It’s a bitter pill to swallow, this realization that we are not the sum of all our hopes, dreams, and possibilities, but the culmination of a singular, lived experience. We are exactly what we do.

Part of growing up is realizing the barbed underside of imagination; for all of the whimsy and invention that comes from asking 'what if', there is a pit that many fall into where they never ask anything else. A life can be filled with rare amenities and conveniences withheld from most of the world, it can be marked by lucky brakes and blessed with powerful resources that give an opportunity for change never before granted to mankind... but the mind, trapped in the perfection of imagination, won't see, appreciate or benefit from a single bit of it.

It's a tragedy to see real potential squandered when men fail to learn, adapt and grow into life they have over an obsession for the fantasy of lived potential that was never really accessible in the first place. It doesn't teach you anything to dream about 'when it was better'. It gives you no handle to turn when the next problem comes about and, like a sleepy driver slipping into a dream, it steals from you the sight that navigates the turns of the road you're actually on.Know where you are, look where you're going and don't let the daydreams linger past the bottom of a single glass of whiskey.Train.

With purpose.⁠