| May 27, 2004
Since Paul Anka wrote Frank
Sinatra’s great hit song, My Way, everyone now has done it
“My Way”. I attend wedding receptions, karaoke nights, birthday
parties, anniversary parties, and the never ending list gets bigger. What
do I find but someone singing, My Way. I hate it! I hate the people
that sing it! I resent the fact that in my lifetime it has never been My
Way. Oh yes, like the words say, “The end is near”. I’m
getting too old to do the things that I had dreamed I could accomplish as a
young man growing up. Somehow, after dropping out of high school, joining
the Army and serving in the Korean War, I got my education, dated, found a
job, married, had children, faced my wife’s death, raised the children
alone, remarried, had another child and later divorced leaving me to once
again raise a child by myself to become a young adult—“So I face the
final curtain”.
While all these others are so damm proud that they were able
to do it My Way, I could not. In fact, it was always some other Way.
Struggling from the early beginning in the marriage to get by, renting
apartments. Trying to save a few dollars towards a down payment to buy a
house, while I watched in shock as the price of the houses were increasing
faster then I could save the down payment to buy the old priced house. The
children, clothes, early school, and college—oh where did all that money I
made go all those years? “Regrets”, oh yes. Does anyone give you any
credit for all you have sacrificed for? “I planned each charted course”,
no way. As I was trying to control my day to day life, life was doing what
it wanted, when it wanted, and how it wanted. Did I, “bite off more than
I could chew”? I did feel at times overwhelmed. I did doubt myself. I
wondered was I doing enough for everyone? I’m not what I want to be. I
never became that great successful man. I’m not that great friend who is
always there when needed. I’m not everything a good husband should be. I’m
not everything a good father should be. I’m not taking care of my Mother
the way a good son would take care of his Mother. But how can I be all
these things to all these people? What is wrong with me? Yes, “I’ve
loved, I’ve laughed and cried”. But not because I did it, My Way,
but because in spite of the hills, the valleys, the hidden traps, mine
fields, so many disappointments and more than anyone’s share of life’s
tragedies, I have not been beaten; maybe bruised and scarred, yes. “For
what is a man” is a good question. I believe the true man is the one
who continues even when it can’t be, My Way. When life keeps testing
him. When he gets knocked down time and again and still continues to get up
for more. “The record shows I took the blows”, yes, the record will
show I took the blows, but I never did it, My Way.
Thank you Wayne! Doc
Wayne L. Misner
Copyright 2004,
Wayne L. Misner. Reprinted by permission. |
