Hey Old Man...

I distinctly recall being twenty-four and in my prime, in the middle of a glorious summer, having lunch with a good friend at Good Stuff restaurant in Hermosa Beach. He was down. He wanted life advice. He wanted financial advice. Being a "know-it-all" I was willing to espouse opinions on any topic with the authority of a sixty year old. Of course I knew what was best for him, I knew what was best for everybody.

I thus proceeded to advance the notions of free will and self-determination. I gave him a little of Robert Frost and "the road less traveled" with a shot of William Ernest Henley and "I am master the master of my fate, and the captain of my soul". We decide our fate. We decide our future. Blah. Blah.

Have you ever had the feeling that someone is listening in on your conversation? Well, seated at the table next to us was some ancient dude (mid-forties). He listened, I think, until he could take it no more. "Excuse me," he said to me, very politely.

I was a bit put off at being interrupted whilst dispersing my wisdom but I, no brute, allowed him a moment. "Yes?" I replied.

"I just want to know how full of shit you are."

My buddy busted up laughing. I was stunned but I recovered and, being a gentleman, I chose to mock him. "Oh? Really? Please, do tell."

He then continued to explain to me how life was going to start beating up on me, sooner or later, and that when it did all my brave twenty-something talk was going to disappear. "You control nothing or, at best, very little. Remember that."

My buddy grew quiet. The floor was mine now. I remember smiling. I thought of being the bigger man. I remember thinking "let it be", like that Beatles song, but I have always been more Metallica than John, Paul, Ringo and whoever the hell that fourth guy was. So I looked the old man dead in the eye and said, "That's just pathetic, man. Have you just quit on life, or what?"

He smiled, WAS the bigger man, folded up his morning paper and finished off his coffee. "That's not the only other answer," he sighed, before cryptically adding, "You'll see."

My buddy and I finished our breakfast and went off to work. The weeks passed, and then the months and years, and the punches started coming. We all take our hits. Life happens and we go from engaging it to sometimes being subjected to it. Things get complicated. Parents get old and die. Mortgages, careers and sins are all negotiated. Then we realize that the game is a bit rigged by this thing called "time".

Then one day it clicked for me. That day with the old man? I had argued self-determination and then, in my youthful arrogance, framed his argument for him as self-surrender. But he had tossed me a bone on the way out the door. "That's not the only other answer," he had said. What was he talking about?

I think he was trying to tell me that it isn't about "fate", it's about "faith".

For it matters less the roads traveled as how the journey is framed.

And one could never be the captain of one's soul, without being given that soul in the first place.