You have to get up, son.
You can’t run forever. You can’t hide either.
You can lose, and that’s fine.
But you can’t quit. No.
Quitting becomes a habit, and this habit is way too hard to break.

You have to get up. You have to give it your best, each and every day.
No matter what.

After all, this is life.
Or should I say this is me. This is my life.
I know . . .

I own this and I claim it. Good or bad, faults or flaws.
This is me.
I have been here for decades now. oftentimes, I see that I look back and lie where I shouldn’t.
I look back too often.
Though looking back is not all too bad.

Decades later.
I never thought that I would look back and regard my life like the way I do now.
Life in hindsight. Life with the breathe of nostalgia and the need to redo or rethink and re-feel youthful.
Or as the saying goes, “ah, to be young again.”
I never thought that I would look back and rethink myself, or rethink my choices.
I never thought that this would be me. But then again, no one thinks this will be them, later in years.
I never thought I would wonder about the warning signs and red flags, which I chose to ignore with hopes they would go away.

Everything was about style, especially back then.
Remember?
Everything was about the way you stood or how you moved or responded to the world around you.
Ah, the male ego and all the nonsense that comes with it.
So fragile. So weak. So insecure, and so it was, a long time ago.
I remember well.
At the same time, I am not sure if I remember anything correctly.
Except, of course, the moments that left a mark. Except the memories that left an indentation in my so-called armor, which I used to protect the so-called truth of my vulnerabilities.

I remember this well.
But wait . . .

The anniversary of the date has come and gone. And do you know what?
This is the way life goes. Minutes add up to become hours and hours become days.
Days become weeks, and weeks become months and months become years.
Year . . . can you believe that?
There is nothing as unstoppable and seemingly unmerciful as the movement of time, which, hence, this is what leads me to here and now.
This is where I am, ten years later.

There was something inside of me, or something in me that was aware.
Understand?
There was something that knew a day would come when I would look back and remember this.
But I would see this in hindsight and notice the flags that stuck out.
I do believe in the inherent foreshadowing that leaves a brief moment of awareness and proves that time is short.
This means I need to pay attention.
No?

I believe in the spark of intuitive understanding, and that somehow, the mind awakens.
There is a thought and a moment of emotional awareness that screams to us. This is like the mind telling us to note that times like this will not last forever.
So, make it worthwhile.

I suppose, of course, the saying is true. If you don’t know, then you just don’t know.
Then, of course, what do I know?

I remember walking through my little town, safe in my own self-destruction, and isolated away from the rest of the world. This was me, a tiny trooper, caught up in a war that never needed to exist. Safe to say that I was placed in what I would consider to be a suburban cocoon. What I saw was neither unlike or similar to what you saw because as I see it now, our vision and our interpretations are not the same. At the same time, I am more than sure that we all come to the wrong conclusions.

I remember . . .

And first, it was rock and classic songs that were known and sung by the generation before mine. I was as young as they come and too new and unaware of what I was about to open.
But I was ready.
I say the word “open” as if to open a sacred box, quite opposite from Pandora, but equally, I say once you know, you can never unknow, unsee, or un-feel the experience. Even more, you will never forget the first time you hear a good song. Or even better, you never forget the music that made up the perspective of our youth.
When you know, you know and, of course, I think of the sources and influences and the tiny doses that expand the mind with a vast euphoria.