Time really does fly when you’re getting older.
Everyone’s heard some version of this statement before, but I didn’t quite understand it until I realized something this past weekend.
March 16 will be the five-year anniversary of the death of my grandfather.
Five years.
It seems like such a long time, and yet it really doesn’t feel like it.
Outside of my parents, my grandfather was the most impactful person in my life. Part of the reason I decided to go to the high school I did was because of him. He would always have stories to tell, whether they were about his time in Vietnam, working on the roof of Chase Field in Arizona or just general life insights.
One thing I’ll never forget is him making sure all of us grandkids knew all 50 state capitals, even those that nobody really thinks about, like Montpelier, Vermont.
When he passed away, all I really knew about Bradley was that they had beaten Valparaiso, my mom’s alma mater, the year before in the Arch Madness championship to go to an NCAA tournament that never happened. Now, I’m nearly halfway done with college here.
Just a few months after his passing, the Cubs dismantled the World Series-winning core that broke the curse that haunted fans, including him, for generations. Now, one of those players is retired, one may never play again and one is washed up, while the Cubs are preparing to challenge for another Commissioner’s Trophy this season.
I thought about this a little during the past football season, but my grandfather never knew the Bears had drafted Justin Fields, who many thought would finally be the quarterback to turn the franchise around. Next season, Fields will play for his fourth NFL franchise in as many years, if a team even decides to pick him up.
The point being: five years is a lot of time for things to change, but it moves pretty fast. If you were to tell me on the day he passed away exactly what the world would look like today, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. I might have thought we’d still be dealing with the pandemic, which at the time had just passed a year since lockdown began.
There’s no way to know what the world will be like five years from now. There’s no way to know exactly everything I’ll accomplish in the next five years.
I’ve thought about writing myself a list of goals I want to accomplish in that time, and then each year doing an annual check-in on those goals to see how much I’ve grown that year. Because, as Ferris Bueller once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
And I don’t want to miss it.
