Taking a Chance on Life

When I was in High School, my standard answers to "What are you going to do after graduation?" were rather pat.
If it was just someone I said "be a cloud" because that got me out of the conversation. If it was someone I needed to be more polite to, I just said "go to college" Rather bland, but it worked.
We went to visit an elderly relative fairly often. He was a little, VERY elderly man- my grandmother's cousin. He never had a positive thing to say about anything and I didn't expect that this visit would be any different. The sun (too bright) was shining through the windows of his overdecorated parlor, making the dust motes dance pleasantly as I wandered, listening to my Dad and Uncle talking (too much) in the (too cheerful) kitchen. Harold had followed me into the parlor and asked me the fatal question about my future plans, and got the bland answer.
Then -surprise!- he didn't complain about college students which was what I was expecting. He leaned toward me and said "When I was a young man, I was offered a job with the circus." He had MY attention! Animated as I had never seen him, a grinning Harold told me that in those days, the circus didn't use canned (recorded) music- they had an orchestra that travelled with them. Harold played various instruments, mostly the clarinet. He had been offered a job with the orchestra. the Circus travelled all over the Northeast and he rattled off the cities on the tour. The performers had made him feel welcomed, and he told me, grinning, about the folks he would be travelling with. It was obviously a joyous memory!
Breathlessly, I asked how long he had the job, travelling with the circus? There was a pause where all I could hear was the low rumble of the voices in the kitchen. Then he told me, in the tone of a confession that he didn't go with the circus. He had a job already in the local shoe factory, and his parents advised him to keep that steady income. His girlfriend, who later became his wife, didn't want him travelling all over the North East with exotic people. So he turned down the job. There was another pause while I thought of that, and I watched the animation fade from his face as if it had never been there. The clock in the hall rang the hour, and then he slowly told me his final secret. "I have wondered ever since, what my life would have been like, if I had run away with the circus." Harold was in his nineties, and this had happened to him before he was 20... over 70 years he had mourned this lost chance to leap into the unknown! No wonder he had become a brittle, unhappy man. I decided then and there that if the opportunity to take a leap entered my life, I would rather take the chance -even if it meant falling- then to have to spend 70 years second guessing my choice.
I know he saw the change in my eyes, and he gave me a conspirator's nod as we wandered back to the kitchen, acting like my life was not forever altered. He never again treated me like the bored child I had been, but always listened to me as if I had something to say. And I have never forgotten the lesson learned.
Of course, when your life plan is to take leaps off cliffs, sometimes you land safe, and sometimes you splat in spectacular ways. But those are the stories for other Journal entries.
For today- think about choices and the bravery it takes to make them.
~D