The Best And Worst Of Me

You’ll often hear people tell you that one time or another will be “the best years of your life”. The time period they reference will vary, and the source of this information will be some sad old soul pining over what might have been. Quite frankly, this is really bad advice to be given. How can you enjoy it if all you are doing is worrying about whether or not you are making the most of it? What really defines the best period of your life anyway? Is it fall nights under the lights playing high school ball? Binge drinking and chasing tail for 4 (or 5, or 6) years in college? Or is it merely as compared to the worst time of your life? I suppose the answer has a lot to do with your perspective.

Until very recently, the answer for me would have been the years I spent living in Athens shortly after college. I moved into a house with my best friend, had a mindless no stress job, and had no real responsibilities. Between UGA football, all night poker sessions, and hitting the midnight showing of every major movie release, it was truly the quintessential bachelorhood. What could possibly be better? At that time, the absolute worst thing I could have imagined was being trapped in some high stress job trying to juggle a career, a wife, a mortgage and an SUV. This was practically yesterday, but at the same time it was another lifetime ago.

Fast forward four short years and it’s a completely different world. I have a wife and a newborn daughter, and my world has been turned upside down and stuffed in a box. Where once I didn’t think about work unless I was there, I now have that high stress job that absolutely consumes me, but it provides the house, the SUV and the minivan. Back then a weekend was sleeping in on Saturday, catching a long lunch with my buddies, and then wasting the rest of the day watching Scrubs reruns. Now a weekend means up at 8am on Saturday to make the most of the day. I’ll mow the grass, spend the afternoon running around with the wife, and do all those other things that a good husband does. Instead of hours playing Playstation, I’ll stand in my daughter’s room and just watch her sleep. This dichotomy is absolutely fascinating to me. Virtually overnight, the beer swilling, skirt chasing frat boy has become this domesticated grownup that the old me would hardly even recognize, but I wouldn’t trade a moment of today for all the “good old days” put together.

So what really defines the best period of your life? It’s not fleeting moments of glory, and it’s not just as compared to the bad times. The answer is that the best time of your life is how you compare it to the rest of the good times. During what used to be the “best years of my life” I thought there could be nothing worse than my life now, but living it now couldn’t be any better.