Taking A Ride on the Circle of Life Runaway Train

After my senior milestone birthday celebration had long ended, I began to wonder if I had checked off enough bucket list experiences. The answer was obvious and not positive. This caused me much consternation as I knew it might be a good time to shift gears given that my expiration date was fast approaching. “Why did I allow this to happen without taking control of my destiny?” Sadly, I spent lots of my years reacting to things that popped into my life and never stopped to focus on the things that really mattered.

With this thought, I sat down, closed my eyes, and began reliving many of the paths I had selected in life. It was a very stressful exercise that led to an extreme bout of dizziness. Suddenly, I felt a deep burst of tremors within my entire body, unlike anything I had ever felt before.

Only after the tremors subsided was I able to reach a relaxed feeling that enabled me to open my eyes and find myself onboard a train. How could this be since I remembered sitting on a comfortable chair in my living room just a few minutes before? Now I was surrounded by numerous strangers chatting intently with each other.

Why was I there, and were all these people around me was my first thought. Much to my surprise as I approached a young couple sitting a few feet away and asked them where I was and where was the train going. They smiled and said, “that is the first question everyone asks when they join the train.” “But the answer is always the same we have no idea where we are and have no idea where our destination might be.”

They told me that they were driving home from a party and were tired and slightly intoxicated, and suddenly lost control of their vehicle and remembered seeing their car flying off a cliff. They hoped the drop would not be too steep to minimize their injuries. They remembered both screaming and hoping for a miracle to save them from death.

And while they both assumed that they would wake up in a hospital bed with serious injuries, they suddenly found themselves on this non-stop runaway train.

Has the train ever stopped at any station to give us an idea of where we were, I asked.

They both smiled and said, that is the second most popular question, and the answer is always the same. “The train has never stopped,” the couple said. “Passengers just join the train and never get off.” While rumors hint that some people have left the train mysteriously, the couple admitted that they never met anyone that had exited the train.

Given our predicament, they advised that we should all learn to cherish the company of the passengers on the train and not worry about where we were or where our destination might be. After all, most of us had probably spent most of our lives trying to control the things in our life that sidestepped “living for the moment,” and it was time to pivot to a new and better strategy!

With such thoughts in mind, the couple advised that it would be a great idea to sit back and use whatever time we had on the train to dissect as many flashbacks in our life as possible. Focus on what we would have done differently to improve our legacy. "This will be the greatest time of our lives, they assured me."

It was at this moment that I realized that this runaway train would make no stops and had no destination.