Today I was driving around and I was listening to U2’s “With or Without You” in my car.

Sirius radio is great because you can just scroll right over the display and it gives you the name of the music that’s playing and the year. And while I scrolled over the song, I realized that With or Without You was a song that came out in 1987.

I remember listening to that song, I was 25 at the time and I had either just gotten broken up with or I had met somebody I really liked and it didn’t work out. I remember thinking to myself, “God, With or Without You, yeah, that’s right, I can make it with or without her. I can survive.”

And then I started thinking to myself what my 20s were like.

So many emotions all the time. When I thought I really liked a woman and she didn’t call me back, I’d freak out for a day or two. I’d go through streaks where I was really good at meeting women and then streaks where I wasn’t.

Why was this happening to me? This is why: I didn’t know who I was.

I was unemployed at certain times, I’d lose jobs for no reason at all – at least I thought it was for no reason at all. But the reason was because I had an attitude problem, but at the time I didn’t think I did.

And I remember that so much of my 20s I’d spent with or without all the things that I thought I needed at the time. It was with or without money: times I had money and there were times I didn’t. With or without women: there were times I had them in my life and there were times that I didn’t.

And every time I didn’t have something in my life I kept saying to myself, “Things are going to be much better when I get more money, things are going to be better when I have more women in my life.”
All the while, I could never be content where I was. I always thought I needed something else, but I didn’t realize the beauty of what the whole journey was all about. The whole span of my 20s was like this. And the beautiful thing about it, and the most amazing thing about it, was I was never going to get those days back again.

Each one of those days was a memory. Yet I didn’t fully embrace or fully enjoy each day.

I remember times where I had no money. I was 23 years old and starving. I had to look through my sofa to find quarters and dimes. I had enough money to go down to the grocery store, the little bodega on the corner of 80th and Amsterdam in New York City. I had just enough money to get a box of pasta and a stick of butter and that was dinner for the next two nights. And I remember thinking to myself, “I can’t wait to have money so I can eat better.”

But in reality, it was the beauty of that moment that I should’ve been appreciating. Nothing lasts forever. Every moment you have is just a fleeting moment, because whether or not you can embrace the lesson that life gives you right then and there, you’ve outgrown that moment. And when you outgrow that moment, what happens? You never get that moment back.

I look back on those days in my 20s and I could easily write 100 blogs about all the things that I went through emotionally. But the real message here and the bottom line is that you’ll never get those moments back. Enjoy wherever you’re at, because that’s exactly where you’re supposed to be right now.
Don’t obsess about what you need in the future, don’t think about how your life is going to be better when you have something else or when you are someplace else. Just enjoy the beauty of where you are right now in your life. Embrace it, enjoy it, and honor it.

Because one day you’re going to be like me and you’re just going to look back and wonder why you didn’t fully enjoy it all the way.