When I was a kid, I often looked into the mirror and wondered what I’d look like and what I’d be when I grew older.
Would I forever be a skinny farm kid with thin, stringy hair and a long neck? Or would I overcome these handicaps to become rich and famous? Would I travel the world? Would I cure some incurable disease? Would I become a great political leader?
I didn’t think much about being happy back then. I just assumed happiness was an automatic benefit of adulthood.
Now, one the eve of one of those birthdays when friends dredge up black decorations and feign concern about advancing age, it’s interesting to think back to the days of great possibilities.
Particularly in retrospect, the “woulds” of those days seemed endless, with opportunities brimming over the horizon and success seemingly there for the taking.
Time has a way of changing things, or so the saying goes. Thinking back, perhaps the best indicator of that is something one of my high school’s outstanding students wrote in my senior yearbook.
Giving me more credit than I deserved, he wrote: “Someday, when we’re both running for the Presidency of the United States, I’m going to beat you.”
The last I heard, he was driving semi-trucks out west somewhere, his campaign seemingly mired in reality. It’s interesting to think back on paths not taken, on things not said, on accomplishments not completed, just as it’s interesting to look back on the positives of life that greet me every day. Even as I not my successes, I can’t help but think of other classmates who seem to have done better.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus of “Seinfeld,” for example, attended college with me. (Actually, I guess I attended college with her.) So did one of Sports Illustrated’s top writers and several of the Washington Post’s. Other classmates are now rich and famous, one owning radio stations and several others winning journalism’s top prize, the Pulitzer.
I always hate to admit I like Norman Rockwell’s paintings, because many artists consider Rockwell a simple man of simple talents.
But one of his paintings sticks with me: A self-portrait of the artist in his later years looking into a mirror to help keep his image in his mind as he painted that image on canvas.
In the mirror, you see an older man with stooped shoulders, wrinkled skin and a smile turned downward by the weight of life. But in the painting, a younger man with a jaunty smile and bright eyes looks back, still ready to take on the world.
I like to think of myself as that painting. But in my mirror, I still see a skinny farm kid with even thinner hair, a still-long neck and abundant “woulds” still floating in my mind.
