Have you ever experienced a special moment when you said or wrote something really extraordinary, something gloriously creative, and you thought the world must learn of your wisdom?
Maybe you are blessed with the humility and intelligence to recognize the probability of this happening is quite minute. Unfortunately for me, I have such “Aha!” moments frequently – especially when I write late at night and compose sentences I think are based on my original thoughts.
For example, I’ve always loved to play games. As a kid, recess was my favorite time of the day: king of the hill, tag, kick the can, anything playful. As a dad, I couldn’t wait to cut out from work and play games with my kids and their friends in the park across the street. As I get older, my wife, Sherry, and I compete in gin rummy, make up silly games in our yard and have snowball fights in the winter.
So last night, I wrote my soon-to-be-famous, creative sentence: “We stay ageless as long as we don’t run out of games to play.” I sent it proudly to a literary buddy of mine.
Five minutes later, he emailed me a quotation written over 70 years ago by George Bernard Shaw: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.”
By George, I think he said it better than I did.