It can happen innocently enough, as it did with a bunch of us in the 680 Newsroom.
“The National Post turns 10 years old today”, I said, my nose behind that very paper. It hit each of us like a thunderbolt. It was a decade ago that the Post was launched and yet we all remembered it like it was yesterday; the pooh-poohs from fellow media, predictions that it would never last, analyses of Conrad Black’s bloated ego for even founding it in the first place, etc.
And that’s how it seems to go. Suddenly the baby you sat in your younger days is starting University and you think, how can that be? I was just changing your diaper a moment ago! John Lennon’s brilliance never shone as brightly as in the lyric, ‘Life’s what happens to you while you’re making other plans’. We do notice time passing as we mark birthdays and anniversaries and yet we also don’t notice it. It’s a strange phenomenon almost universally experienced by adult humans. Therefore, we get that physical shock upon learning of an unexpected milestone.
Are you doing what you want to with your life, and are you sharing it with whom you want? Are you striving for the goals that give you that inner kick? Are you treating people as well as you can and are they doing the same for you? Are you on the path you think you were meant to travel or are you stifling your own needs to keep the peace, or because the alternative is just too hard, so it’s easier to stay the uninspiring course? These are essential questions, I think, as time continues to tick away, whether or not we even notice it.