A Bridge to Nowhere...

...and you're gettin' there fast.

Recently I've been thinking about the following belief that I hear being passed around by people whose minor screw-ups have left them feeling down, or who have given in to a rekindled old flame, or who made good on a broken promise, or whatever: that everyone deserves a second chance. While I definitely see where this kind of thinking comes from, and I cannot refute the belief that, at times, second chances can be warranted and make all the difference, I have to ultimately disagree. Not everyone deserves a second chance. In fact, I think that most people don't deserve a second chance, and it's a mistake to just hand them out for free.

Second chances, like everything else in this life, should be earned.

Sure, sometimes people screw up and it's either a mistake or the product of some kind of unalterable unfortunate circumstance that causes that person to act outside of his or her normal range of behavior. Even in this case, the mistake should not be overlooked. If someone wrongs you, they're certainly capable of doing it again. Suppose that same circumstance arises again. Will that person a.) learn from his or her mistake, correct it, and respond accordingly, or b.) allow that unfortunate circumstance to again dictate a harmful response or action? How the person responds to this criteria should dictate whether or not the second chance be granted.

I know that life is a long time, and nobody's perfect, but just as those good seeds who work hard to correct mistakes and improve themselves day-to-day who deserve every opportunity to succeed and atone past sins, there are those who will simply take advantage of each opportunity that is presented unearned, who do not deserve these second chances.

"I suppose it is possible...

...to live as full a life in seventy hours as in seventy years; granted that your life has been full up to the time that the seventy hours start and that you have reached a certain age." --Ernest Hemingway

I'm reading For Whom the Bell Tolls for the first time, and it's reminding me of why Hemingway is my favorite author to read. Chapter Thirteen has one of the best descriptions of love that I've ever read paired with a meditation on quality of life and trying to get the same out of seventy hours that you'd hope to get out of seventy years. That's some good stuff, and it's serving as my motivation for the day.

Why not try to get seventy years' worth of life out of every seventy hours? It might be tough to keep this pace up for long, but I think it would be admirable to try. I've always been of the opinion that really living life is about experiencing everything it has to offer, the ups and the downs, and this fits right in with that. Since we never know how long we've got, we might as well try our best to cram as many of those experiences into as short a time as possible. So what if we age quicker because of it. I know I wouldn't care much to die a few years earlier at the expense of having lived a life full to the brim with experience. Hell, I think I'd trade ten years of floating along for one year chock full of everything I wanted to do.

The cliche that comes to mind from my days as an athlete is "leave it all on the field," which basically translates into holding nothing back and giving it everything you've got while you've go the chance to give it. And so, with Hemingway's Robert Jordan as my inspiration, I've decided to try my best to live intensely in every way possible. Not that I've necessarily been holding back on any of my emotions or feelings, as I've actually made great strides recently in embracing these things, but I think there are times when I, like most people I know, get a little content and relaxed and take some time---days, hours, minutes, whatever---for granted.

So, here's to taking a more active role in experience-making and the continued embrace of each and every opportunity for life.