Time to smell the flowers

I saw a dear friend for lunch recently. We’ve known each other for approaching twenty years – almost half of my life and almost a third of his.  We first met at work, at the beginning of the dotcom boom when internet technologies and the World Wide Web were becoming commercially interesting. We have many shared experiences from our time spent working together: the excitement of launching a new business, the mental challenge of creating something innovative yet industrially and technically unproven, deep camaraderie from working ridiculously hard to meet seemingly impossible deadlines because the launch date had been announced, a core of shared values, ethics and humour.

Its ten years since we last worked together but meeting up is as enjoyable as working together and it doesn’t bring the constant need to deliver projects, manage incidents or sort out security issues. We’d both be rich if we had a £ for every one of those scenarios we’ve managed. Now we get to talk about IT things instead of doing them while grabbing (or missing) lunch. Now we get to talk about holidays, health, children and grandchildren as well as news of friends and family. There is, I suspect, more balance in our lives today than when we worked in a frenetic start-up.

Neither of us is a person who does things by halves and neither of us will go to our graves having lived only a sedate half-life. My friend is at a point where work gets in the way of all the things he wants to do outside work. He’ll retire soon but in no way will he be retired. At some stage I hope to join him in that active, days full of adventure kind of retirement.  There have been points in both our lives where life was edged out because our careers required significant energy and we aren’t the kind of people who shirk. Do all things well or die trying could be our motto.

To be in the present and live every day as if it were my last means achieving a healthier balance. I learned the hard way. We all need time to smell the flowers, to do more than simply plant them in a rush, throw on some water and hope they grow. Over lunch we talked about my recent surgery, the benefits and consequences and that I’ve now done all I can to limit the risk of another run-in with cancer. My friend said it must feel good to have this final surgery behind me, to be able to get on with life. It does. Not that cancer was going to call a halt to everything but it certainly got in the way for a while. No-one wants to dwell on it but once you’ve been down this road you can never be certain you and the big C are through. Taking time to smell the flowers, to savour their beauty and delicious scent, holds far more importance than one might otherwise think.

Hunter S. Thompson once said “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming Wow! What a Ride!”  I have no way to arrive at my grave pretty and well-preserved (cancer took care of that) and in any case skidding in broadside and totally wrecked sounds much more fun.

I guess I’ll never stop planting the flowers but these days I take a moment to smell them too 🙂