Letter to my children
Friday, April 3, 2009 at 3:31PM 
Sometimes it is only at the end of a story that you know precisely where and when it begins and how far back you have to go.
Thinking about my own life 'story', I do not have this advantage of hindsight and am not sure I will ever truly understand how all the pieces fit together. If I have discovered one thing in my life, it is that true existence rarely fits into neat stories, where all loose ends and tied and mysteries are resolved. When life comes into the world, it is like a piece of glass breaking into thousands of tiny shafts, each one reflecting something of their original form and containing some small remembrance of unified meaning.
I used to claim to have a clearer picture of who I was and greater confidence of the person that I was born to be. As I grow more aware of the sand of life rushing through life’s eternal timer, however, the picture begins to cloud and the pieces don’t fit as well as they used to. I am left only with fleeting moments of insight, rushing away from my mind as quickly as they came.
And that is why I now consider mine as a story of unusual ordinariness. I used to live the dream that I was going to make a difference to the world. I used to believe that I was unique and that my life would unfold in a never-ending series of successful decisions and predestined choices. I viewed those around me with pity and contempt. They did not have my God’s-eye view upon reality, my talent, or my vision of a successful future. I knew how to get to the end of the rainbow and there would find my treasure. Only now I realise that the rainbow was not what I had imagined and that I was living a dream that was not my own.
As a new millennium came, I realized that I was not going to become one of the lucky few still remembered in the next. I was not hand-picked for stardom, deemed by chance to enter the spotlight of history, or gifted with unusual talent or creativity. I realised that I was but an ordinary man who would live and love and suffer and die, having but a short time to make his mark upon an ever shrinking collection of people around him.
What surprises me, though, is that, somewhere deep inside, I am happier this way. The pressure is off. There is nothing to lose. Even the mistakes I have made along the way somehow make less difference when you don’t have the weight of history-making bearing down upon your shoulders. My life feels more my own and I am no longer the possession of powerful women and men who are charged with the sombre task of history-making.
And so I continue to tell my ordinary tale, with not even half an eye on it entering into the public domain to be commented on and criticized on issues of content, structure and style. It is a story dedicated to those who have yet to begin their journey, with the sole purpose of assisting them in their own attempts to pieces together those shafts of broken light and catching a glimpse of the light that is refracted by their unique past.
Reader Comments (3)
You tell a very intimate part of your struggle with you coming face to face with yourself from who you want to be to when you realize who you are and the comfort you seem to find in that.
Great post.
David, don't be so hard on yourself. Its wonderful that you are able to express yourself, but at the same time you are still torturing yourself to meet expectations that you admit will never bear fruit.
Its wonderful to be young and ambitions but its more satisfying to be 71 and able to live with no regrets.
I'm a throw back in my circle because I still love to write letters instead of spending countless hours on the phone just yada yadding.
Before I sign off, your are being bookmarked in my bloggers file so I don't forget to check in when I have the time to turn on my computer.
I hope all your questions will be answered by the time you get to my age.
Goodnight from the Jersey shore USA
Thank you both for your comments. You both rightly pick up on the inner struggle that was (and is) and important theme in this post. Reflecting on what you say, I think that struggle has always been present for me. My earliest memories, in fact, point to these kinds of feelings, more than, for example, childhood play.
The perspective of a man who is 71 and lives with no regrets, however, fills me with hope. You have travelled further along the path and I trust that I can learn some of these important lessons in the next few chapters of my life.
Thanks for being part of this conversation.