It sometimes seems our whole life is about getting to the top. We are encouraged to be at the top of our class, beginning with kindergarten to make sure we are in the top few chosen to attend a top university.
Given a piece of higher ground, whether a pile of dirt, a baseball mound, or a uneven sidewalk or path, kids (boys in particular) will begin a game of King of the Hill, or being on top, up higher,over the others.
Be your best, work your hardest, play with intensity and never settle for being less than on top. Athletes are continually training, physically and mentally to remain at the top of their game. So it is in the business/ work world always pushing for the top.
The top is always farther along. Higher up than it looks. Harder to attain. When you do attain it, according to society, you will experience fulfillment. You will be able to see the whole world below you and know you have made it, made it to the top, to the tip top of....what?
American culture tells us that making it to the top of life means working toward the day when being on top will no longer matter. The term for this is "retirement", and whether you are talking to a newly graduated college student, or the parent who has just got that student (their last) through college, they have the same goal make it to the top. Work hard, retire on top.
I too have had those aspirations and have thought if I could just get a little higher on the salary chart, be a little higher on the seniority list and be an employee of high value, I could plan to make it to retirement. I could stand on top to that mountain representing my lifetime of accomplishments and look down on all the other people still struggling to get to the top and know I had lived the American dream.
I have been on track for that day for the past 25 years, and the plan was even accelerating to come true perhaps three to five years earlier than I had planned. Retire at 60, or at least change directions. That would put me on top.
Well, here's the real world. I have made it to the top. It's wasn't as far as I thought it would be. Because my employer, despite my goals, has it own goals of how to get to the top of the business world and it no longer includes me and my goal. The top came about 3 years before I expected it.
So here I am, at the top of this hill where the path ends. Many might think it's not the top, but the edge of the cliff, but I'm seeing it more as the place from which to scout the future. I think that from this vantage point, I may be able to see more of the possibilities than I might have had this happened 10 years ago. Back then I farther down the hill, hacking my way through the wilderness to the top.
I'm going to take this opportunity to look around, get the spotting scope and the binoculars, heck, maybe even the telescope and see what possibilities abound.
What will my encore be.
I am thinking of the motto or mantra I have quoted often, "Life is short, eat dessert first!"
I believe I'll sit here on the hill a while and have some pie.
