How did I get here?

When most people start to look back upon their lives from 50 years old and above it is sort of this question often: "How did I get here?" It usually means something like "I have been so many different people in my life how did I wind up living the life I'm living now?"

This isn't necessarily an easy thing to answer either. When you are young you often have health and as you get older (if you are wise) you also get wealth. (But not always). I read a book once called, "Life Begins at 40". It was written in the 1930s when people mostly didn't live above 60 or 65. But now, for example, if you live to be 30 you can basically expect to be 90. But then, the point of view of the book was, "Unless you pretty much have your act together by 40 you aren't going to live much longer, because unless you have your financial ducks in a row by 40 you likely won't."

But now, that isn't necessarily true in times where 5 careers in one lifetime is not unusual at all. Even my own life is sort of like that too to the point where I can look back and be honest and saying that I like being a father best and only 2nd best I liked owning businesses because I never liked being an employee of anyone except my father in the Electrical Contracting Business that he owned while I was growing up. So, like many if not most people who survive to 50 I found myself moving towards having more wealth and less health. Whereas in my 20s and 30s I had much more health and much less wealth, but always enough to care for myself and family and we never really starved (even though there was a time in 1990 when food was a little scarce for awhile.

So now I live in one of the most beautiful safe and simultaneously boring places I have ever lived. When I was young I liked a certain degree of danger in my life and where I lived because it was exciting. But as you move out of your 30s into your 40s I found personally that I couldn't survive some of the same things I could at younger ages.

Also, I always liked long walks alone in the forest when I was young or with my father when I was growing up. Now, more than likely I walk with my dogs in the forest. However, now one of my dogs is old and just likes to smell everything and if I'm not careful I'll leave him behind smelling things. So, sometimes now I just go alone so I don't have to worry about losing him in the forest on fire roads or trails. For a couple of years after my son's last divorce he lived near us until he got a teaching job out of state. So, he was a project I was working on so he could move on with his life divorced but with a new Bachelor of Science Degree. So, we walked a lot sometimes long distances which kept me in great shape. But then he got this new job elsewhere and at 65 it is a lot harder to adapt to changes like that especially leaving me here mostly retired with my wife and teenage daughter. To my daughter I'm an old dinosaur of someone out of the 1960s and 1970s whereas she was born in the 1990s.

Tonight we all watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" together. For some reason I agreed to the movie because I had it mixed up with the movie "The Apartment" with Shirley Maclane and Jack Lemon. I knew something was wrong when I said, "This movie's in black and white" and my wife said, "No. It's in color maybe it's been colorized." At which point I realized this was an Audrey Hepburn movie with George Peppard in it instead. I don't think I have watched this movie all the way through for many years because I didn't remember most of it anymore. It was funny to watch people do things on the record player that people now do with computers like try to learn foreign languages (Portugese). I remember this was how we became verbally fluent in languages then by listening to records of people speaking in that language and later we did it with Cassette tapes, then CD's etc.

Also, I was 13 years old when "Breakfast at Tiffany's" was made. So, I enjoyed seeing all the old cars then I used to see on the streets like "57 Chevys" and some cars still from the 1940s(my Dad had his brother Tommy's Blue 1941 Century Buick until 1956) when he bought a new Century Buick.

So, how did I get here? I can look back and see 3 to 5 year increments of my life where it was somewhat the same. But how did I really get here? By living one moment at a time and adapting to everything on the way as it came up as best I could. That's how I got through the last 65 years to here.