“I’m preparing to enter my glory days,” my friend Ben said as we were walk slash talking down Abbet Kinney in Venice Beach.  

He said it just like he’d said, “so we’ll go surfing for about two hours this afternoon, then run errands.”  Or, “I figure I’ll buy my big boy car after business school” – definitive and matter-of-fact, but not without a clear background of thought.  He’d prepared to prepare for said glory days, and now that the decision was final – now that glory days were the objective – he’d proceed in a fashion such to make his days full of god-damned glory. 

Ben is both a lucky and blessed guy.  He comes from a great family who’ve supported his education and development.  He has god-given smarts and a magnetic personality.  He went to an great school which set him up for early job success.  He has particularly nice hair.  So if you’re thinking – sure, easy for him to choose glory days, this kid leads a charmed life – you’re a tiny bit right.  But you can be given all the ingredients for a charmed life and still end up miserable.  You can have the means to be a dreamer but settle for a life of obligation.  You can truck along doing what it is you think you should – what seems safe and stable – full-well knowing there are major “to do’s” you’re avoiding adding to the list.  Yes, Ben has the means to dream, but its his choice to flick the switch.  It’s his choice to say, “time for my glory days” then define what those are and go get them – even if it takes several tries. 

“I mean, I haven’t compromised yet,” he said as he handed me a goat cheese-stuffed prosciutto wrapped fig off the brand new grill in his lemon tree and rosemary bush clad back yard, “why should I start now?” 

“Mmm eees oooo,” I said, which was “it’s true” but in the spirit of our convo I’d shoved the entire fig in my mouth.    

“Because I haven’t really failed yet,” he said.

And that was the most true thing he’d said all day.  Ben – like any of us – has experienced set-backs, hiccups, and mistakes, but at 25 he hasn’t failed.  None of us have.  So from his perspective, why not push it to the brink of everything he wants?  Why not spend some time figuring out what would make his life ideal, and then seeing how much of that he can get?  Why not call this autobiography chapter “glory days” and then write it now, not after it’s passed?