Top 5 Memories

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One of my favorite scenes in TV history is when Charlie on LOST is sitting around trying to think up his five greatest memories ever, because he knows he is going to die. I remember when I saw that on TV, I spent a lot of time thinking about what my five greatest memories were.

If you have a couple of hours to kill on a weekend, it’s a pretty interesting exercise, you might want to try it. I am going to tell you all five of mine right now. Some of them were from a long time ago. The first was on July 4th, 1989, the day I met my wife. I will tell you the story of how I met my wife. I was at gifted and talented camp, and all of us nerds, about twenty of us, this big clique we used to run around in, were goofing off in the dormitory lounge, after study hour and before bed, and the boys and girls started pretending to kiss each other tonight. I was pretty bold and random as a teenager, I would literally do anything, so there was this girl I had my eye on, sitting on the couch, so I flopped down on the couch on my back, put my head in her lap, and asked for a kiss, kind of expecting that she’d push me off onto the floor. But she actually gave me a kiss, like a real kiss, and there was so much electricity that everyone in the room just stopped what they were doing and stared, and as I went back up stairs to the boys’ floor with my buddies, they were like, what the hell was that? I had no idea. The two of us spent the entire next day on the balcony of the dorm, talking. We didn’t even come down to eat.

Another was senior year of high school, when I was drum major of the marching band. We got a slow start to the season, coming in 5th and 6th in competitions, underperforming. We completely revamped the drill, holding all these extra practices, and at our next competition, in East Lyme, we killed it, leapfrogging everyone, coming in first. The band carried me off the field on their shoulders! Let me tell you something, there is nothing in the world better than being carried off the field on your team’s shoulders.

I would say a third was when I was clerking on the P. Coast, for the 3Com/PALM spinoff. Bananas.

A fourth was my first book signing up at Columbia. Lots of friends were there to support me.

A fifth was what I would call my first real DJ gig for a real party. The vibe in that room was unbelievable. People still talk about that party, to this day. Insane.

So I just did this on the fly, but as I look back on the list, what do I see? I see two things: relationships and achievement. You know what I don’t see on the list? Money. Of course money is important, but out of all the phenomenal trades I’ve done, both institutionally and in the PA, not one of them come close to making the list. Maybe a few of them make the top 100. But I’m probably not going to be thinking about great trades when I’m on my deathbed. I’ll probably be thinking about July 4th, 1989. You never know what day will be the day to change your life.

So I kind of want more of the great memories and less of the time in between. So what do I want out of life? I think about this a lot. On an intellectual level, if you ask me what I want, I will tell you money, so I can do cool stuff with it. We have kind of moved away from buying the solid gold house in Charleston, since the commute is too long, but we have moved on to the solid gold house on the beach. Solid gold house on the beach costs some money. A few big trades, like Canada, will get me there, or a few good years of TDD, but let’s say I get the solid gold house on the beach, and I am living there with all my stuff and my two cats and my wife of almost seventeen years, and I am there, on the beach, in a chaise lounge, writing TDD on the beach, that’s pretty cool, right? I mean, that is what most people dream of. But go back and look at the list of memories. What is on the list?

1. Relationships
2. Achievement
3. Achievement
4. Achievement/Relationships
5. Fun

Now I’m not going to say that my list is better than your list or anyone else’s list, but I kind of dig my list, and those are five great memories, and I hope everyone else gets to have the same great memories that I do. The human experience being what it is, I’m sure they do. But is solid gold house on the beach going to end up on the list? Probably not. Are fancy vacations going to end up on the list? No. A Tesla? Certainly not. That doesn’t mean that these things aren’t worth pursuing. Being content and comfortable materially are important. But it seems like I spend more time than I want to trying to earn money to be content and comfortable materially than focusing on achievement for achievement’s sake.

Some of this is growing up. Like, I am 40, and nobody is going to carry me off the field. That’s what adults do, they work. In fact, most real adults have children, which occupies the vast majority of their time, and (hopefully) that will provide many good memories. So it’s different for me. I am more internally driven.

I have a T-shirt

that I wear often. I get interesting reactions when I wear this shirt. A woman told me once, I love your shirt. I looked at her. “Do you?” I thought. Do you even know what this means? Funny thing is, if you look at the shirt, it kind of matches up with the list of memories. I don’t think that’s an accident.

I don’t have the answers. But in general, I am a pretty happy guy, and it is not really a secret why. I like my work, I am always learning and growing, I have a great relationship, and I spend a good amount of time doing things that I enjoy. Pretty simple. I still have trouble with some things, like time management (sometimes I get stressed out from being pulled in many different directions) and I lack discipline (notice the diet didn’t last long). But things are good.

Want to be happy? Set a goal, spend a year or two working for it, achieve it. Notice a difference? Of course.