it seems to be a time of remembrance

i ran across a person i knew online.....
i knew him a very very long time ago, not for very long, maybe a year.
he was a musician, and quite a good one.
i don't know how exactly i ran across him. possibly looking for a piece of music that he'd introduced all of us to
i remember he had a dream to play with a very famous musician.....and i also discovered that he achieved this-not for long apparently as he hurt his hands and can no longer play.
if you knew how amazing this guy was, you would be feeling really sorry for him right now
but that isn't what i want to talk about
i want to talk about life as a classroom
or a series of classrooms
i was wondering what on earth i had done with my talent?
sure i had a cover and some articles
some small bit of 15 minutes of fame in my field.
but did i fulfill the promise of my talent? or did i waste it?
and what exactly constitutes fulfilling the promise of your talent?
is it ok to do it once
or is it something that is only fulfilled while you are doing whatever it is you are talented at?
and as you move through life
you leave behind things, places, people, ideas, actions that were at one time so very vital to your sense of being alive.....
when years later you look back on them as so many dead and dying leaves dissolving into dust.

i have learned that at each stage of life, i see things differently.
now almost mid 50's, i realize how when i lived intuitively, i did ok. but if i stopped to think about things, not so much.
truly the act and dailyness of living does confer real wisdom
as well as change your perception of what is truly important
maybe time isn't linear but is a perception related phenomena that is from your changing attitudes?
maybe if you could precisely capture the feelings/emotions/thoughts of a time in your life you can BE THERE, not just relive it from here but BE THERE
(ok so maybe i am nuts and read way too much quantum physics for my own good)
but the question now becomes........would you really want to?

i know that now i know enough to design more of my life. how i want to live, why i want to live that way.
it's so many simple things that mean so much to me
bernie
the animals
gardening
putting food by
the rhythm of the seasons spinning eternally on
handcrafting a life as much as i can

these are things i started out with though, deep inside.....
now they are coming more and more out
so does aging mean you become more of yourself?
that you are finally free of others expectations?
either way
it's the options that you have and what you do with them isn't it?

in the end i mean