The Great Gatsby

It is one of my favorite books. In fact it is the only book that I have read twice, now I started re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird but stopped after a couple of hours by the pool with LullaBelle. The Great Gatsby has this one great moment that really struck me. It is the argument between the two main characters where Gatsby responds to the comment that you cannot relive the past by saying of course you can.

As I sit here with a cup of cherry flavored jello enjoying a brief break in the work day I am reminded of Thursday afternoons at Grandma and Grandpa's house I think about the past. I recently had dinner with an old friend from Chicago on my recent trip to DC. He apparently loves to keep up-to-date with all the goings on of people from the old neighborhood and girls that broke up with him. So between courses he talked to me about them and about what they are doing. To my surprise, only a few of them are in jail.

I came home from that trip and opened up the old yearbooks and started going through pictures and notes. Sitting there and quietly kicking myself for letting some opportunities go by and then chastising myself for chasing after some that I should have let go by. I think that retro-introspection is a great thing, but Fitzgerald had a point too. You can relive the past but you cannot do anything about it...it still is going to end up the same way that it did. It's sort of like watching an instant replay of a touchdown and thinking that you can stop the play.

I do not want to re-live the past or change anything that happened because of love the person that I am and the place that I have come to in life. But I remain forever curious about what would have happened. It's as if I could suddenly watch an alternate line of the movie of my life and see if it got to the same point. How odd would that be, if you choose to change something and still ended up in the same place. That would be absolute evidence of Divine Providence...or at least maybe dumb luck.

The question I guess is, is life about missed opportunities or is it more about the ones that you took? Possibly that it is an alternative new version of the glass being half full/empty? My Grandpa's wisdom comes to me now. He would sit me down from time-to-time and remind me to take everything in moderation. A little bit of happiness and a little bit of sadness. I little bit of drink and a little bit of sobriety. A little bit of work and little bit of play. You combine all those little bits and then you have life. So I guess my life is a little bit of missed opportunity and a little bit of those taken. Not too bad a way to look at things now is it?