I have long advocated that people should live out their dreams and it needs to be done while you’re young!
Everyone has dreams and most, nearly all, I’d bet go unfulfilled. I know my mom and dad had dreams of travel and adventure once the kids were grown up and gone. Didn’t happen. I watched my mom succumb to the most debilitating case of rheumatoid arthritis imaginable. First her hands, then her knees and she was getting around on crutches and then a walked in her 40s. And she was gone at 58.
My brother Gary faired a little better. His dream was to play golf and he became a PGA member and was a club pro for many years. He and his lovely wife, Dianne, traveled extensively, arranging golf tours for people and I know they went to Hawaii several times as well as Puerto Rico and other spots in the Caribbean. He and Dianne loved going on cruise ship vacations and they loved dancing so much that the dedicated an entire room in their house to a place they could spend their evenings dancing. He developed bladder cancer and was gone at 55.
While sitting in offices, dreaming about being somewhere on a boat I came across two passages in books that had a profound impact on my life. The first is from Sterling Hayden’s book Wanderer…
“‘I’ve always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can’t afford it.’ What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of ‘security.’ And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine–and before we know it our lives are gone.
“What does a man need–really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in–and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all–in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.
“The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it the tomb is sealed.”
The second is from Richard MacCullough’s book Viking’s Wake in which he said:
“And the bright horizon calls! Many a thing will keep till the world’s work is done, and youth is only a memory. When the old enchanter came to my door laden with dreams, I reached out with both hands. For I knew that he would not be lured with the gold that I might later offer, when age had come upon me.”
So I ditched the nine-to-five routine, got a job as a deckhand on a dinner cruise boat in Fort Lauderdale, put in my time there and in Chicago, got my U.S. Coast Guard license and spent the next 20+ years running other people’s boats around in the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, up and down the east coast of the U.S., on the French Riviera, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, and when I turned 50, I pulled into the harbor at Isla Mujeres, Mexico on my own (finally) small sailboat making a nine-month cruise to Mexico, Belize and the Rio Dulce in Guatemala and back to Fort Lauderdale. I was living out the dreams of my childhood and youth
But that was then. This is now. Last year when I went to get a letter from an internist saying I was fit to drive here in Panama, he told me that I had emphysema. Well, I knew that. I’m not dumb. A half century of inhaling licit and illicit substances into one’s lungs will tend to do that to ya. But, while he gave me a referral to a doctor specializing in pulmonary disorders I didn’t act on it. Until yesterday (Nov. 6th). I’m susceptible to pollen allergies and there’s something in the air now that has me hacking and coughing up icky stuff from my lungs which I haven’t been doing since I gave up smoking a year ago. I’ll be completely honest. Sometimes the simplest of tasks leave me wheezing. Gasping for breath. I don’t have a chipper walking gait any more. I’m not doing a Tim Conway old man shuffle, but there’s no pep in the step.
So I dug up Dr. Osario’s referral scripts and went in to Hospital Chiriqui and saw Dr. Rafael Rodriguez. Nice guy. Speaks excellent, though heavily accented English, and insisted on conducting our consultation in English “so you will know exactly what’s what without losing anything in translation.” And here’s the big difference between doctors in Panama and in the States. We were in his office for nearly an hour. He explained things clearly and pulled no punches. “You’re lungs are in really bad shape. From the breathing test you did when you came in it shows you have just 34% of the lung capacity you should have! If we don’t treat this very aggressively you will be on oxygen at home in six months. But that doesn’t have to happen. I believe part of your problem, from how you’ve described your symptoms, is due to allergies that we will tackle at the same time we go after the emphysema.” He referred me to a cardiologist since I had a heart attack six years ago and have three stents. I’ll go see him in a week of so. Dr. Rodrizuez wrote out a slew of prescriptions and ran me through a bunch of breathing exercises I have to do daily. The cost of the visit was $75, but I get an old-timer’s discount of $15 so an hour of face time with the doctor set me back $60!
I went down to Romero supermarket pharmacy and bought everything he’d written. Don’t know what happened to the receipt, but after getting the 20% jubilado discount it all came to almost $275!!! But I can’t imagine what that would have set me back in the States!
So, if I hadn’t gone out and actually “reached out with both hands” I’d STILL be in the same physical condition as I’m in today but wishing that I’d actually gone out and done all those things I did when I was young and able.
Got a dream? Don’t let it escape you. Reach out with both hands and don’t let go. Remember, too,
One More Good Adventure 