A million years ago when I was 28 years-old I was working in radio as a salesperson selling commercial air time. (Selling time – what a concept!)
Anyway, I was introduced to a woman by a client—and we immediately hit it off over lunch. A friendship rapidly developed and before I knew it I was at her apartment one evening, having dinner.
I knew she was a published author. But seeing her three New York Times best-selling books on the coffee table I couldn’t help but feel jealous. I picked one book up. Fondled it. Read the raves for the risqué-for-the-day exposé and stared at her picture on the back cover. Flipped through a few pages. And in that moment I hated my new-found friend.
And I wanted to be her.
What the hell was I doing with my life? I wanted to write! Had always wanted to write ever since I was twelve and got my first poem published in a locally produced magazine called The Chronicle of the Horse.
My mom was so certain I would write a book about the adventures of farm living that, to facilitate the dream (and jog my memory in later years), she kept a daily farm journal from 1961-1972. (I actually did write about Fieldmont, the farm in Virginia I grew up on, in my book, Unearthing Venus.)
But this was 1978. I wouldn’t write my first book until 2010. And sitting there in my friend’s living room, scotch in one hand, paperback in the other, a veritable tidal wave of envy consuming me, 32 days would have been too long to wait for my dream to come true let alone 32 years!
Not surprisingly, I got hammered that night. And wrecked my brand new car on the way home and almost killed myself. (A whole other story.) Also not surprisingly, I never pursued my friendship with this woman. It was just too damn painful.
Today, from the lofty perspective of wisdom and hindsight, I can truly say the reason I tortured myself so terribly was because I really would be a writer someday. It was “in me” and “in the timeline” of my life, so to speak—as inevitable as the sun rising the next morning.
I could feel the reality of it … and yet it was not a “present reality.” And so I despaired.
Back then I didn’t know that time is non-linear. That there is no past and no future. That there is only NOW. That every moment is contained in THIS moment. That space/time is an illusion. A mighty powerful one, but an illusion all the same. I didn’t know this. And I drove myself half crazy wanting to have done the things that were part of the future me.
So please understand – if you are consumed with anxiety about not having done something you desperately want to do, take heart: that’s what the rest of your life is for. If you are filled with guilt about not living up to your own expectations, take heart: that’s what the rest of your life is for.
The very fact that you feel driven/consumed by these kinds of thoughts and dreams is testimony that you already are (in the future) what/who you long to be; you’ve done what you so desperately long to do in the future – perhaps a future so distant it’s another lifetime.
The very fact that you are still breathing means you have time—the most precious gift we have on this planet—to do the things you dream of.
So put your feet on the path and start walking.
PS – Life really does have an ironic sense of humor, and it shows up occasionally. Last year I discovered my friend didn’t really write the books she was famous for. It was a marketing con job by the airline industry. They hired a ghost writer to pen the books and set her up as one of the authors because she was hot and would come off well in interviews and on TV.
And there I was, drinking myself blind in a frenzy of jealousy while she was drinking like a fish beside me knowing the whole time she was a fraud.
Strange the way life works.