WOULDN'T IT BE NICE?

Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up and feel that today was the start of the rest of your life? Wouldn’t it be nice to be as happy, and carefree – even for a moment – as you and I think we were when we were children? Wouldn’t it be nice to have everything to look forward to and few regrets to look back at? Wouldn’t it be nice?*

I wonder when I think like this whether I have started daydreaming of an impossible place that never was and can never be. 

I think however, that it is human nature to dream and speculate and plan. Thankfully life is a process, a journey which we embark upon and which unfolds with or without our active participation. Because of this, some of our plans and dreams actually become reality.

I am not Fatalistic. I do not believe that every moment of our lives is predestined and already playing out automatically without my input and beyond my control. 

I am not convinced either that I am in total control of each and every event in my life and therefore, with few exceptions I have all the power over myself and those around me to seize and control my destiny.

I guess instead I am more likely a person on a journey who has somehow retained a bit of optimism that good things come to those who look for them, just as bad and sad things come to those who expect them. I actually like a few surprises in life and having some unexpected things happen from time to time.

The wonder of it all is that on life’s journey, many things have turned out to be better than what I planned for, speculated about, imagined or dreamed about. Like the late Fortune magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes, I am experiencing More Than I Dreamed**. It is my burden to have to dream about something new. Poor me.

I am the first to admit that I have had, and continue also to have unexpected and decidedly unwelcome surprises – i.e. the root canal coming up next week I learned today that I must have.

Perhaps overall I have some how succeeded in making my life into a triumph of Optimism over Experience. What I can influence and organize of it, makes it possible for me to have enough to work with that I can continue moving forward.

*Wouldn't It Be Nice? (Song) The Beach Boys - 1966

**More Than I Dreamed/a Lifetime of Collecting, 1989 Malcolm S. Forbes and Tony Clark