Our accomplishments can be hung on the wall, but trying to live off them will hang us out to dry.

I’m forever thankful that I was part of radio broadcasting for so many years because, if nothing else, it taught me this one lesson: You’re only as good as your last show. That means that what you’ve done is death warmed over compared to what you’re creating now.

 

Living on our laurels is not living; it’s an attempt to re-live. That’s like trying to breathe with yesterday’s breath; it can’t be done.

 

I bartended for about a month of my life in the early 80s and this is what I vividly remember from any late Tuesday night: A bar filled with people stuck in the past. The soliloquies boiled down to, “who I was,” “what I did,” “who I could have been” and “what was done to me.”

 

They didn’t grasp life’s simple secret that life can only be lived now. We all forget that universal truth from time to time and the consequence of forgetting is to attempt an impossible feat - to relive or change the past.

 

What you’ve done may, in fact, be impressive and even productively instructional for others. Write a memoir or a manual and make some money from it if you can, but don’t attempt to pretend then is now, or you’ll pay the price of trying to live off yesterday’s “Wow!”

 

Here’s the message in bumper sticker form: “All ‘Wow’ is in the here and now.” All creation happens now. What you did may follow you around but it won’t lead you anywhere except to the “Happy Hunting Ground.”

 

“What am I doing now?” is a reflective question that will bring us back to the present. It’s the place we all live every minute of every day. When we pretend we’re not here, we stop creating, which means we stop living.

 

And here’s a message to all my old bar patrons if you’re still around: Drowning your sorrows doesn’t produce brighter tomorrows; it only prevents you from living now.

 

All the best,

John