I woke up one morning four years ago, went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The person staring back at me was a shocking sight. He was old. Some guy with a grey beard. What happened to the young guy who used to inhabit that mirror? I suddenly realized that he was gone. He wasn’t young anymore. He was old. And he was me.
I felt like the guy in a TV commercial for men’s hair and beard coloring. But it wasn’t funny. It wasn’t only my grey hair and beard. It went much deeper than that. I felt old. It was as if my entire life flashed past me in a wink. The things I had done… or not done were now in the past. I was suddenly 62-years old. Where the hell did the time go? Why didn’t anyone warn me about this?
If there was ever a candidate for reinvention, I was it. But how? Was it too late to regain my youth? Yes. Was it too late to regain my youthful outlook on life? No! Despite my age, I still had a youthful way of looking at things—except myself. I couldn’t hide it any longer. I was an older person. So what?
I began, from that day on, to ask myself questions. What do I want to do with the rest of my life? How much time did I have left? Would I keep my health long enough to enjoy the time I had left? What was the point of all this? What did I want? Why did I want it? And, what was I going to do about it?
It was then that I began to write this book. Originally, I wrote it for myself, as I tried to cope with the reality of my own mortality. I had learned things over my 62 years. But, even knowing things was not enough. It’s what you do with what you know that makes a difference. I soldiered on with my book. The results, dear reader, follow. I discovered what one has to do to reinvent himself or herself—one has to know what one wants and go after it!
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