A Life Half-Lived

Reflections on reaching exactly half of the life expectancy for the average American male.

Today is a milestone for me indicating I have officially used up exactly half of the 72 year life expectancy for an American Male: a life half-lived. Normally I feel the occasion allows for a mid-life crisis, such as shaving my hair which never seems to grow, except for the fact that the entire past year has been a crisis.

This time last year, I thought that my sometimes girlfriend at the time and I would go out to dinner, but when she forgot (or never knew) my birthday, I went to my favorite restaurant in Bullhead City, a Mexican Restaurant where I took a different lady on a first date whom I never heard from again. For my dinner I had my usual Steak and Shrimp, cooked with the shell on and splayed on the grill, which I had at least once a week when working as a mining engineer. A continuous celebration of the fact that I had “made it” and grabbed my dream that I had been chasing since I was 18 by the tail and I wasn’t about to let go. For my birthday dinner I finished with dessert of a giant ball of vanilla ice cream in a deep-fried pastry bowl while the servers sang “Happy Birthday” to me. I had a sense of accomplishment in that although my “real life” may have had a late start, my life had meaning and I woke up each day with purpose: to use my education in mining to help the world meet its needs for raw materials. My birthday the year before was the day before I started at GVC as a Surveyor Tech and embarked on the experience of a life time.

Today for my birthday I will make hamburgers on our “busy day”, an activity that is important and necessary for society but one hundred years and ten-thousand miles away from Mining Gold in Arizona. And its been a while since I’ve had steak and shrimp for dinner. After work I will grab dinner with my dad and maybe watch a baseball game since Denver won the NBA Finals last night. Maybe take a walk along the irrigation ditches, a network of continuous and deep “V”s dug into the brown dirt, and watch the slow, brown water as it reflects the weeds clustered along the bank and spreads across the valley on its way to grow green chile, corn and alfalfa.

I don’t know what next year, or the next 36 years will bring. If they are anything like the last 36, heartache and disappointment will be served like a disgruntled lunch lady scooping an oversized portion of that day’s colorless entree onto the corner square of my lunch tray, landing with the sound of a wet thud and splattering beyond the square corner. I don’t dare to have dreams these days simply because I’ve had my fill of heart break and it hurts too much. Of course, I have ambitions, like becoming a successful writer, but much like my memories, these ambitions are like visiting a high end store: encased in plastic and only to be looked upon and admired, never to be purchased and brought home or even touched. But still I write like a miner with a pickaxe and mule working each day to find just enough gold to buy syrup and coffee to make it through the day. My goals are much closer to my heart, definitely within the length of my arm and never further than one day’s honest work.

Now that I am old enough to start giving “advice”, with the slightly salted hair near my temples and chin to prove it, I suggest my readers: Hug your Mother. Call your Grandma. Ride a train to see someone you love. Mail a handwritten letter to an old (or new) friend. Visit a 300 year old building in your city and observe how people built with whatever materials were available. Go for a walk. Pet your dog and rub his tummy. Do something that’s free in your city. Take a road trip out of town to a roadside diner and order an old fashioned hamburger. Read a story. Write your Story. Look at old photos of friends, families and loved ones. And never forget that the weight of a thing is one-hundred times heavier when it’s gone than when it’s sitting in the palm of your hand.