The time of your life

One of my favorite lines from a Green Day song is, “I hope you had the time of your life”

I heard it again recently, but it landed differently than it used to.

Not as nostalgia.

Not as a goodbye.

But as a question,

If this was all there ever was, and all that will ever be...

Did we do it right?

Did we live it well?

Did we let ourselves have the best time we could?

I used to think my legacy needed to sound impressive.

That it had to prove I mattered.

And maybe it still does, a little.

But more than anything now, I want my mark to be this:

That I encouraged people to enjoy their lives.

Fully. Loudly. Honestly.

Without apology.

Somewhere along the way, we are told it’s time to behave.

To quiet down.

To dress differently.

To stop laughing so hard.

To trade joy for dignity.

But I don’t believe that’s wisdom, I think that’s fear dressed up as maturity.

Wear what makes you feel like yourself.

Laugh out loud.

Throw the party.

Stay home if that’s what feeds you.

Giggle until midnight or sit in silence and call it holy.

Be partnered. Be single. Be undecided.

None of it makes you broken.

All of it makes you you.

I want us to get comfortable in our own skin, the skin we are in right now.

To stop outsourcing our worth to strangers,

to filters, to magazines, to mirrors that lie.

No number of surgeries can make us younger.

We are the age we are.

And that is not a failure, it is proof we are still here.

I look back at my life and I had a lot of fun.

Sometimes too much fun.

And no, I don’t regret it.

What I regret is believing, even for a moment,

that I was supposed to stop.

Life is fragile.

And life is precious.

And life is an unbelievable gift.

When someone I love reaches the end of their life,

my greatest wish is simple:

that they had the time of their life.

And when my day comes,

I want to be able to say the same…

that I lived,

that I laughed,

that I showed up as myself,

and that I savored this one wild, beautiful chance

as deeply as I knew how.

I am not done yet.

And neither are you.

We are not dead.

There is still life here.

And I, for one, intend to live it.

I hope you have the time of your life...

xo

Gabby