GUEST COLUMN: "There Are No Second Chances"
A friend of mine died this semester. He will never see the sun nor rain anymore. I feel a certain emptiness when I think that he will never come back. I shall never see his face again. At his memorial service I saw all of his friends there crying because he had given all of them something, but now he would not be there to give again. Then I thought what if another friend of mine had died, one that I was closer to. I could go on crying for days thinking about all that we had done together, all the life we lived and enjoyed together, and how he would not be there to share all those times again. I thought of friend after friend, how much my life would suffer if I had lost any one of them. Then I thought about my family. The way my mom hugs me every time I come home, and the look of joy and love in her eyes. The way my day shakes his head and says, "Oglum, oglum," ("My son, my son,") every time I do something wrong, or the proud smile that comes over him when I actually do something right. I don't know what I would ever do without these things. In the midst of thinking about all these people and how much they contribute to my life and how much I would miss them if they were gone, I came to a wonderful realization -- they are not gone, they are right here, I live with them every day. I can't describe to you the appreciation and joy that leapt into my heart when I realized that I actually live with these people, I mean really live. We can laught again, together. We can talk, we can sing, we can play, we can do whatever the hell we want because we are alive. Don't ever forget you are alive. That means you have unlimited possibilities ahead of you. I remember seeing a picture in a coffee house of a funky old lady saying, "Get all the kicks you can, baby . . . You only make this scene once." The way I figure it, you better make it the way you want it, the way you love it. There is no coming back. There are no second chances. There are no second chances. There are no second chances. You just get this one life to live, and what a horrible waste it would be if you actually didn't enjoy it. I once asked a friend as a joke if he would change his future if given a chance to. He actually replied that he would. Well, he is lucky because he has all the opportunity in the world to change his future because it lies fully ahead of him. As it does for you . . . Enjoy.