I’ve been thinking about something.
After enough years in the fire service, you learn that life usually doesn’t announce when everything is about to change.
There isn’t always a warning.
Sometimes somebody wakes up, pours a cup of coffee, kisses their spouse goodbye, and heads out the door expecting to be home for dinner.
And then they aren’t.
I’ve spent a lot of years meeting people on days they never expected to have.
I’ve stood in living rooms, on highways, in hospital rooms, and in front yards while someone’s perfectly ordinary day became a dividing line between before and after.
You see enough of those moments and, whether you realize it or not, they follow you home.
Not the details.
The lesson.
For most of my life, I probably thought the big moments were the ones worth remembering.
The vacations. The birthdays. The anniversaries. The graduations. The places we saved money to visit and the photographs we took while we were there.
And they matter.
God, they matter.
But after all these years, I’m beginning to think we’ve got it a little backward.
The really important parts of life might be the ordinary ones.
Sitting beside someone you’ve loved for years and watching absolutely nothing important on television.
Dinner around the table.
A phone call from your daughter.
A kid laughing from another room.
Driving somewhere with your wife and talking about nothing in particular.
Coffee in the morning when everybody you love is exactly where they’re supposed to be.
Those moments don’t feel important while they’re happening.
That’s the problem.
We assume there will be another one tomorrow.
Most of the time, thankfully, there is.
But my career has shown me enough exceptions that I don’t take that promise quite as seriously as I once did.
Maybe that’s one reason travel has become so important to me.
It isn’t really about collecting destinations.
It’s time.
Time away from the noise.
Time with Jodie.
Time with my daughter, grandson, and SIL.
Time to sit somewhere we’ve never been before and have a conversation we probably could have had at home—but somehow didn’t.
The older I get, the less interested I am in accumulating things and the more protective I become of the people and moments that actually make up a life.
I don’t always get this right.
I still get aggravated over things that won’t matter next week.
I still worry about work.
I still waste hours I won’t get back.
Knowing that time is precious doesn’t magically make you wise enough to use every minute perfectly.
Maybe it just makes you notice a few more of them.
And maybe that’s enough.
The rear view mirror is filled with birthdays, vacations, Christmas mornings and places I’ll never forget.
But mixed between all of those big memories are thousands of ordinary days I didn’t know were special when I was living them.
I know better now.
Someday, one of those ordinary days will be the one I’d give anything to have back.
So while they’re still here, I’m trying to pay attention.
Tomorrow never lives.