Glory days

I have mentioned in the past that I walk the beach few times a week sharing it with the seagulls and a few beach goers. When I do, I have my IPod on listening to music I enjoy. Yesterday was Bruce Springsteen (aka The Boss) day. Although I have listened to him in the past, yesterday I heard two consecutive songs that got me thinking.

The first was Glory Days. I think it is hard to go through a long life without experiencing days when everything seemed to be going our way. Success and personal satisfaction seem to be two main characteristics of those times. String several of those days or weeks or months together and you have the makings of Glory Days.

The problem is that most of us never realized at the time that they would come to be remembered as our glory days, perhaps because when we are living them, we think we finally got things right and nothing will change. The high school football hero, the person we love becoming our spouse, the rapid promotions - experiencing those and so many more are the basis of those special and wonderful times in our lives.

But the reason we look back and fondly remember those times and call them Glory Days is because those periods in our lives didn't last. That really hit home when The Boss started singing the next song - Let's Be Friends. In that song, he sings the chorus:

Don't know when this chance might come again

Good times got a way of comin' to an end

Don't know when this chance might come again

Good times got a way of slippin' a-way

And so it is with our Glory Days; they do come to an end, they do slip away.

So to really enjoy them and value them for what they are worth, they need to age like a fine wine. They need to be bottled in our minds, allowed to ferment and then when the time is right, to be uncorked, and fully enjoyed. The tasting is in the remembering, swirling those times long past over the palate of our consciousness, because in doing so it brings back warm memories and a smile. That smile comes from knowing that someplace, some time in our past we had our Glory Days.