[grooveless touque]

The worst part of being young is feeling like you haven't accomplished anything, and the way the world rears us today, the worst part of aging is feeling as though you'll never accomplish anything. I'm only twenty, but in my mind I know I won't be around all that long either. I am not the kind of person who lives to be 70 or 80 or 90. I find it hard to imagine living out of my 50s. Even though that is what most people consider "young" to move on, another three-decades-plus sounds like a long time. But as you so readily pointed out, "not long enough to do what you need to do". In fact, I don't even know if by 55 I'll even have found out what I "need to do". That's something that's scared me lately. We lost a good friend of the family at 51 recently, a misunderstood man with a heart of gold not enough people got to see. And it's really been troubling me...he had decades of work to do and decades of people to touch. Whereas my horrible old British grandfather lived to be 93, punishing all the world for his hard life every step of the way. But that's beside the point...I'm talking about Gord, our family friend. He was claimed by cancer he didn't even know he had. And that's sort of the way I'd like to go...he was shopping for groceries on Wednesday and dead on Friday. But 51? My god...just goes to show that, no matter how good a person you are and no matter what positive effect you have on those that know you, you're never guaranteed long enough to fully appreciate it. If fifty years enough time to even figure out what difference you can make in the world, let alone enough to go out there and try and make it happen? At 50, can you even comprehend what impact on the world and those around you that you might already have had? I think the answer to both questions is no. And ever since he died, I've been thinking of how many countless lives out there are ended well before they had reached fulfilment of any sort, before they had had a chance to complete something that would define them. The smallness of Being in our world is terrifying, isn't it? Some people cling to religion to believe that they have already been fulfilled, but I don't subscribe to that and thus, I'm left with the prospect of a functionally empty life trying to find some way to accomplish something that means something to me, on a deep level. Right now there's a line from an Allman Brothers song that has been haunting me for months..."I gotta change my way of living cos the blues is all I see." Change my way of living...how? To what end?? We're constantly changing as we try and define ourselves, and make a place for ourselves somewhere in the abstract range of Being. What does it mean to change, and what does change mean? And when will you make a change that really means something to you? Will you even realize it at the time? Like I said, all these thoughts of just how small a man on the infinite range of Being seems. I don't know what I'm saying...or why I'm bothering to post such scattered and unfocused thoughts...but your post sounds a lot like what I've been thinking lately.