You Only Live Once - Or Do You?

My dad commented on some Facebook post of mine last week and said "It's funny how time works isn't it?" Time really is funny. You think that time should be constant and linear but it just isn't.  Sometimes things that happened years ago seem like yesterday and something happened last week seems like forever ago.  Which is kinda why I feel like the statement "You only live once" may not be entirely accurate.

Okay, so we only get one life (unless you believe in reincarnation which is an entirely different topic and post) but do we really only live one life?  Last night I went out to dinner with  my parents to a bar that I used to frequent on Saturday nights.  The server/bartender kept looking at us like maybe he knew us and the three of us felt the same about him.  Finally my dad just asked him if we knew him from someplace and he and I started talking about where we could know each other from.  I asked him how long he has worked at this bar.  He tells me that he worked Saturday nights about five to seven years ago.  I said that would have been about the time that I was in a lot and that I used to order Sex on The Beach with Malibu rum instead of vodka.  I watched the light bulb go off.  He says to me "I KNEW I recognized your laugh. That was a different life".

First off, how funny is that that he couldn't figure out where he knew me from until he heard my drink order? Second, if he thinks that was a different life for him imagine how I feel. Going out and ordering those drinks was certainly a catalyst to the end of my first marriage. Since then I have lived at least two more lives and am currently working on a third. I would also much rather have a beer than a Sex on the Beach :-)

I suppose they are technically "phases" of life. Changes that happen.  But they sure do feel like different lives. You feel like a different person while you a leading those lives. If you feel like a different person, and you grow and change while you are that person, does that mean that as you go through life, and you change, you are living a different life?  I know that I am certainly not living the life I was seven years ago or even six months ago.  I am very thankful for it too.

The hope and goal should be to live better lives as you get older and change.  Make sure that each life is better than the last one.  That you are a bigger, better, happier person.  Maybe then, when you finally settle on the life that you're going to keep living you will be able to look back on the culmination of all of your lives and know that you ended up exactly where you were supposed to.