Live A Full Life

I starred at the old man sitting on a bench across the street. His face looked disturbingly familiar, I looked away and thought for a moment. Then it hit me, I was watching myself in 40 years from now. I looked tired, and somewhat sad. I forgot about what I was doing on the corner of 56th and 1st that morning, but decided I would cross the street to speak to myself as an old man. At first I did not feel comfortable with the idea, there was a lot of awkward silence in between the mundane, break the ice, weather kind of conversation. I managed to pull a corner of the mouth smile out of him as I caught him checking out a younger girl in a mini skirt go by. “Dirty old man!” I exclaimed. A big yellow school bus full of kids went by and I dropped the question I really was here to ask:

-“Why do you look so sad?”

He was looking at me with my same green eyes but a different shade of green, the kind without much fire left, the kind that had given up.
-“I a…I am sad because in my life I went after the wrong things, made the wrong turns at each and everyone of the crucial intersections.”
A tear was now slowly working its way down his/my left cheek. I was in sync with his emotions, but for the fact that I had the hope he had lost.

“You know it is not because I was dumb, I might have actually been too smart for my own sake. I have never let myself just follow my heart. There is a stupid rationale stuck in my brain, the play it safe kind. That constant fear of failing prevented me to jump on any of the fun opportunities life through my way. I went after material possesions and security. I maintained myself into a fake kind of comfort, spending time with fake friends, faking even my own beliefs. I created a reality full of fakes. Time went by and eventually caught up with me, the sand castle got washed away by the tide and my heart was left empty. ” He looked up at the cloudy sky and mumbled something along the line of “’s gonna rain soon”. He turned back and bent over to get closer to me as if he was about to tell me a secret:

“Whatever you do kid, live a full life, be fearless and follow your heart”

I woke up all sweaty back in my studio in Manhattan, just in time to get in the shower and run out the door to catch my bus. I looked across the street, this time I saw an old guy, not me, but he looked happy.