If I am being honest, the news this past week of Jimmy Buffett's passing hit me right where it hurts. Maybe it was a sense of my own mortality. He was 76, and I am 63. That's only 14 more years. Kind of like a high fastball up and in towards the head, i.e., a little too close for comfort.
But I don't think fear of death is the reason for how I am feeling. It is something a little bit deeper. A true sense of loss.
I wish for many things in life. I wish I could play football like Josh Allen (The #17 Bills version). I wish I could play pickleball like Ben Johns (look him up). I wish I had hair like George Clooney (alas, I am a Troup male, and well, there's genetics). But most of all, I wish I could write like Jimmy Buffet did in his songs.
I want to state upfront that I am not, nor have I ever been, a "Parrothead."
I never went to a Jimmy Buffett concert. I don't own a parrot costume. And short-sleeved tropical shirts don't look that great on me (even if I had Clooney's hair!). But I do listen to a lot of Jimmy Buffett's music. His acoustic guitar rhythms and lyrics have been an essential soundtrack of my life for several decades.
At this point in reading the post, my brother (David) is likely slapping his forehead and saying something to the effect of "You have got to be kidding me" or "WTF" (more truthfully). For my brother, who needs several legal pads to list out his live concert experiences, Jimmy Buffett wasn't in his rotation. And that's okay. It's just one thing on which we disagree.
Never before, and, for me, probably never again, will I have an artist whose music I enjoyed while at the same time diving deep into the lyrics and their meaning. Jimmy Buffett's words made me stop, reflect, and look at life from a different point of view.
Let's start with the song that inspired this post "Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On." Here, Jimmy speaks of purchasing a watch with no dial. It just says "now." Whenever I hear these lyrics, it reminds me that time waits for no one. That our lives are rivers ever flowing to some unknown destination. So we need to enjoy the ride while we can.
As someone who is a little OCD (my mom would have said anal retentive!), that is a powerful lesson. I just wish it hadn't taken my retirement to learn the lesson. Sooner would have been better on that song lesson.
In this same song, Buffett sings about tragedy and sadness that may befall us and how to respond. Take a deep breath. Pick yourself up. And keep moving forward. Words to live by, I believe. I only have to look within my own family for two amazing examples (they know who they are and how I feel about them). They teach me this lesson every day through the manner in which they actively choose to live their life.
Then there is "Son of a Son of a Sailor," a song that I have on repeat on my Spotify playlist. It is playing as I type this draft. To me, the lyrics speak to the influence that parents can have on their children. It's about what we pass on directly or by example in how we lead our lives.
In honor of Jimmy and with a nod to my Grandpa Leo, I named my fantasy football team "Son of a Son of a Salesman." The way I play fantasy football, one could argue that this name will not be much of an honor.
My Grandpa Leo was a traveling clothing salesman in the Upper Midwest in the early 1900's. I never got to know him because he passed away when I was very young. But I learned about him and sales skills from his son, my Uncle Shy (in my estimation one of the world's greatest sales professionals).
My own sales career would often take me through Minneapolis where a dinner with my Uncle Shy was always on the calendar. The simple reward was stories of his father and pearls of sales wisdom from my Uncle Shy (a name that I might add was a misnomer because he was anything but shy).
I have no musical talents, and I can't write song lyrics. But I do have this blog. One of the reasons I write is to leave some of my thoughts on life for my two sons. I never knew what my father thought when it came to emotions and feelings. He wasn't the "onion that you could peel back a layer at a time." Maybe more like a billiard ball (hairstyle and hard to crack). So I write. And I believe my boys will read.
Finally, I have two songs that are tied for my all-time favorite Buffett song. "A Pirate Looks at Forty" and "He Went to Paris." While they are different songs, with distinct interpretations of the lyric(s) meaning, both carry a central theme of looking back on life with a combination of admiration and (yes) regret. As I transitioned into retirement over the past several years, the songs have blended seamlessly in my head.
In my own personal version of this Buffett song, "A Retiree Looks Back on Sixty," do I have regrets? Yes, I am sure I have a few. But if you asked me to list them, I couldn't tell you what they were. I always choose to look forward. I have family and friends. That is pretty much all I need.
To quote Jimmy Buffett in a nod to the way he (and all of us) should look at our lives, "Jimmy, some of it's magic, some of it's tragic, but I had a good life all the way."
Dan Troup is The Sunny Side of 57. He loves to reflect and write about life, family, career, and retirement. Check out more of his reflections on his blog site. Also, consider subscribing to The Sunny Side of 57. When not playing pickleball or hiking with Sue and Rigby, he writes a new post about twice a month.
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