In a small beach town in New Jersey, I stopped into a coffee shop to get a cup. It was just after dawn on a Monday and I was headed to a meeting.

“You are up early.” Ethan, the man behind the counter said.
“Yeah I am headed towards the city, have another two hours to go.”  I replied.
We spoke for a couple of minutes and we became philosophical.

“What’s your biggest regret.” I asked. He was silent for a while.

Across the counter Ethan felt like a fool. The lofty expectations he once held, had crumbled through time.

“I’m not sure about regrets, but the toughest thing to accept is that my time to live my hopes and dreams, has come and gone.”

He picked up his broom and swept the feathers which were mingling with fallen leaves on the floor.

“Is it ever really too late?” I asked.

“This lady I had known in a past life, once told me that ‘hope will exist as long as there is a pulsating heart and that I should never give up.’

Sometimes though…”

” Thanks, I needed to hear that. Lots of times I feel like we are all just lost children dressed in adult clothing. We are faced with adult consequences and we have no idea how to proceed, if we should proceed or how the hell we got there in the first place. We have no clue what to expect and if we do, most times it’s never in the form we expected it to be.”

“Indiana Jones.” He said.

I was silently expecting to hear more from him.

“What do you mean?” I finally asked.

“He was always making it up as he went along and I think that is the way we live. We aren’t blindly making it up, we are using our past experiences or lessons that we learned.”

“Those fucking mistakes though…” We both laughed.

Then we were silent. He picked up a rag and began to wipe down a clean counter. I wished him a good day and walked to my car.

That conversation though was a wallop to my psyche. I couldn’t shake a feeling of sadness, of loss and regret.  As the sun began to brighten the day, there was that all familiar darkness enveloping me.

I thought about what Ethan had said and it caused some rays of light to penetrate that cloud hovering above me.

I heard his voice.

“This lady I had known in a past life, once told me that ‘hope will exist as long as there is a pulsating heart and that I should never give up.’

As me drove into an exit he thought, “Sometimes though…”