Ever look back at a period in your life and think, “That was a great time. Wish I’d known it then”? The trouble is, you never know a “great time” when it’s happening. You take life as it comes and often fail to appreciate just how good it is. The opposite is true of bad times. Very often, bad times seem much worse as they’re happening than they do in hindsight. You always know a bad time when it is happening and you rarely want to remember it later.

I think this is all because the good times are never 100% good, and the bad times aren’t all bad. It’s the percentage of one over the other that places the period in one camp or the other. I remember times when I was stationed in Germany that I consider very good times now. Yet if I really think about it, I can certainly pull up some bad memories mixed in with the good. Likewise for the bad times in my life. There are a few good memories to be mined there as well.

“Lost time” is another one of those things that slip by unnoticed, yet always stand out in hindsight. I think of all the chances I had to get something done or accomplish some goal which would be beneficial to me now. Yet at the time, it didn’t seem so important to do anything differently, or it seemed there’d be plenty of time to do it later. Either way, the time slipped by and was lost.

I guess this is all a part of growing older. You reach a point in your life when you have less ahead than you have behind, although I’d like to hope that I’m still at the mid-point. And maybe it’s the desire to have more good and productive times in the second half of my life that’s prompting this line of thought. I just hope I recognize them when they’re happening.