Many of us have missed chances to accomplish all kinds of things from ridiculous to sublime and everything in between. It is human nature to prioritize what we do according to some unfathomable internal metric. And in the process we always miss the chance to get to something else. Or someone else. Or someplace else. Or just plain something.
The real tragedy of the "He" in the song seems to be that both the dead guy and the live woman wanted to be connected somehow, but missed the chance. A careless word or deed, or something not done or done badly. We can't know the back story. Just the effect.
Which brings me back to the idea of getting "it" done now, whatever "it" may be. Oh so easy to say isn't it. "Just DO IT". But not so easy to do. Why? All those damn priorities keep getting in the way. Save for the future or spend now? Cut the grass or write a story? Take a nap or work on the gun stock? The fact is that you can't do everything and that means deciding what is important and keeping the important things at the top of the list. As the "golden years" (those are the years when you spend all the gold you have saved) proceed, it becomes even more important to make the list and keep on it. To paraphrase a line from Gary Jennings great novel "The Journeyer" (1), Marco Polo said he lived so at the end he would not say "I always wanted to but never did."
This is what I wish for you and yours, and for me and mine. What could be better than to be dying and not be able to think of a single thing left undone, unspoken, unexperienced or unloved. My idea of a good life.
(And, on the way to the citations, I found this country song by Blake Shelton I never heard before, and except for a few details, it is my story. Funny how things work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnf82BCQV68 )
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crIUhQ536f8
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Journeyer
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