We all live with something I call plausible ambiguity. That is the quiet lie we tell ourselves about our own finite nature. The same way people joke, “If I get hit by a bus…” as if death is a hypothetical event instead of a certainty. Trust me it will happen. All your beliefs and all the things you hold dear may or may not be true. The end will give you your answer. It is between now and then that we actually can lose life. Here me out.
Well, here’s the truth:
We’re all going to get hit by a bus someday. The only question is when.
This book isn’t “about me,” but I’m the only one left who remembers that time. And back in 2010, at 47 years old, I still lived inside that plausible ambiguity. I was about to turn 48 that November. It was March. And up until then, a bus would’ve needed to come out of nowhere to take me out. The question is was I living a life or was I just marching through like most do?
I was a social dissector judging this person, avoiding that one, playing the country club hierarchy, believing that it mattered that I hung our with “people like us.” And of course, there were people who wouldn’t hang out with me either. That’s how stratification works. It is silly really and it is part of the ego. People thinking they are better than others primarily because of money. Yet we all face the same bus.
At the top, there are fantasies people none of us truly know but many of us strive to emulate. And until 47, I had never questioned why. I was simply a striver. And I was achieving what I thought I was supposed to achieve. More of this or that, more money primarily and like some are experiencing now at ages far younger than me in my profession, enough money to say Ok lets stop now. But I wasn’t in the right social circles yet. I needed more perhaps. What a mistake. The way I learned that lesson is not my wish for anyone.
We planned our lives like many couples do. And because we had traveled the Caribbean since the one crazy answer to a serious question in early 1995 the islands were part of our rhythm. I can’t count how many times we went. Its pretty dang near 100.
But the story that matters starts here.
When I began seeing Brenda, she was eleven years older than me, twelve, depending on the month. I was 34 turning 35. She was 45 turning 46. By early 1995, we finally went out on a formal date. And by mid-spring, something had shifted. I was smitten. And I think she was too, though she’d never have said it then. The age difference bothered her more than it ever bothered me.
When I finally pressed her on things and she was candidly scared about the future with the age difference she could only say it by playing a song.
But eventually we arrived at the moment every forming relationship meets:
Are we doing this or not?
She was still going on the occasional date, but people already saw us as a pair. There comes a point where ambiguity becomes a bit uncomfortable. And I finally said it one night at her home:
“Hey, this has to stop. Are we going to see if this works the way we think it might? I think it’s time we not see other people.”
I asked her, “What do you want to do?” Seemed a simple question. On topic for sure.
Our humor was already in place by then, and without missing a beat and with absolutely no relation to anything we were talking about or had ever even thought about she said:
“I wanna go to Jamaica.” And just like that, the islands became our thing.
A perfect avoid. We laughed. And four days later, we were in Silver Sands, Jamaica, where Claudette made sure our stay was magic.
We left Jamaica committed to making this thing real.
And then there it was. The song.
But even then, we were not home free. There would be a few more twists and turns to us finding our life completely together. But we made it. And she was able to say it without a song soon enough.
So it goes that at 47, turning 48, I was becoming a person who at least for a time—could give and receive unconditional love with full awareness that we were heading toward an end.
I think at some level you have to get into that state of mind. Eventually you will have to become a rock and be there and not only know you need to be there but want to be there. You will have to cast aside many things. You may even have to make choices trusting in the universe that you make the right choices.
Jobs are expendable at times of need. And even then, I knew I might still go first. There was no more it has to be a bus. Her bus was coming, and she saw it. My bus was coming, too, and for the first time I had a clearer vision of what I should not have done to that point and maybe what she shouldn’t have either. More on that. We say things we shouldn’t and we fret too much over from which end one squeezes the toothpaste. Many things will fall by your wayside in the light of what real life means.
Because on that November 2009 trip, when we were visiting the islands, we were working a plan like so many couples do: buy the home in the Caribbean, visit often, retire there as soon as we could. And we came close. Very close. (Side note: the house we almost bought is still for sale 16 years later.)
But neither of us knew that March 10, 2010 was Day One of the 1,657 days she had left.
Looking back, the greatest truth I’ve learned is this: you can lose your plausible ambiguity about death for a while and you can be cracked open by reality and see your own ending and accept it for what it is and what you believe, but if you’re otherwise healthy, you will eventually drift back into denial. Humans can’t maintain that level of clarity forever.
I’ve slipped back into it myself. I try to return to that clarity, because when I sit in the truth of my own finite nature, I am a better man. A better human. It strips away the nonsense. It returns me to who I actually am, not the character I have created. We all create characters. Those characters are on social media and may not be 100% who we are. Why we do it is because we think we are going to have to get hit by a bus. Thank goodness for tik tok where I can just be more of me.
Because none of what we achieve matters. Only what we give. Only what we leave behind in the hearts of a very small number of people who might remember us for a generation. There are not that many J.S. Bach’s in history.
Everyone is on a years-long plan and sometimes decades long because of plausible ambiguity, and they use every excuse in the book to keep doing what they do. They have to be good at it. Some have to be number 1 and let you know it. Our industry more than any other is littered with that mindset. And what they do is often nowhere close to who they really are.
But here’s what we knew with certainty: we did not have 3,650 days to follow some polished ten-year plan. That’s why we moved to the beach in 2011. We chose life over strategy. Presence over performance. Days that mattered over years we might not get. It meant some financial change. It meant compromise on dollars and starting to trade dollars for time rather than time for dollars. And the choice came too late. She was going to die.
And that’s what I want you to hear before we close this chapter: you are going to die. So am I. So is everyone you love. You will be what we think is the fortunate one who watches them go or they will watch us leave. No matter. The lesson is clear.
There is no version of your life where you outrun that truth. It is the measure of a person, however, of how they give their life when the life of another is going to be cut shorter than expected.
This need not be us, however. It need not be torment to live nor your wish to die. I love Stephen King. He is brilliant like that.
Because you can’t outrun regret. Or is it more about coming to see regret for what it is. Life and circumstances take you on a journey and as Stephen Colbert so aptly has said “You can’t pick and choose the things you are grateful for.” Paul Edgecomb has a particularly hard task and harder than I have faced for sure. And Stephen King explores ambiguity for what it would become if a bus was never to come. And as we get into more depth I want you to know, that in time as we found footing, Brenda lived those days. We lived them. Forward with Hope. More on that too I am sure.
Nothing matters more than life, joy, and the people you choose to be connected to while you still have the chance.
This is what Day One taught me. And it’s what the next sixteen hundred fifty-six days confirmed, one breath and one choice at a time.