You Only Get One Shot, You Can’t Do It Over Again

Day six: Climbed the mountain in Tepotzlan: If you were to climb without taking breaks your body would not be able to physically make it and you would either give up or collapse from exhausting but if you take a series of same breaks when you start to feel tired and give your body time to rest, recoup and adjust to the elements you could go on forever or in this cause make it to the top of the mountain.
When taking a cab later in the afternoon our cab driver was talking to us about many things but one thing that struck me was when he asked us this question: if the worlds water was divided into four parts Canada would own three of those parts of water. So why don’t you share? (my add on) your water with the people who don’t have any and need it to survive.
The cab went silent; we didn’t know how to answer this man’s question. What do you say to something like that, to someone who comes from a country where water is such a huge problem with survival.
Later in the evening we were invited to the home of one of Gary’s good friends named Carol Hopkins. This woman is truly fascinating and has done countless things and has lead many different lives in her years on this earth. To go into them in this blog would take quite some time but I will name a few to paint you a small picture. Carol was a principal of a school, a world champion triathlon, and a social justice lawyer for people being wrongfully accused of child abuse, just to name a few. As the Quest group and her five international students, who were studying here in Cuernavaca, sat at Carols house around her table eating the food she had prepared for us we shared with one another stories of adventure that we had experienced, concerns for the future and important things that are and had happened in the world, and we shared bits of our own history with each other that built a connection between all of us sitting in a circle around this wooden. Even though most of us had been strangers to each other before this gathering the conversation that followed openly between us was so comfortable and so pure you would have thought that we had all known one another for years and we had gathered for a reunion. One story that was told by Carol stuck out in my mind above the rest, why I am not entirely sure but I will share it with you.
Carol told us a story of her parent married, then divorced then married other people. Then a few years later started having an affair with each other behind their new partners back. Then separated from those people and moved in together. After six months her mother moved out. At the ages of 83 and 87, I believe, they announced to their children that they were getting married again. They were married until her father’s death a few years later. She went to help take care of her father and in the last few days of his life she began writing his obituary. She asked her mother for some details about her father to but in his obituary. Her mother went through some old boxes and found letters he had written her from when he was in the war. After she finished reading these letters she went to her husband’s side and said she needed to talk to him. She told him she had been such a fool and that she hadn’t realized until now that she had been in love with him all of these years. He died a few hours after those words were spoken. “What a waste of time carol said to us, all those years apart, all those years wasted. You only get one shot, you can’t do it over again”