I read something recently and jotted it down. I knew that I would use it one day for a story that needed to be told. It said, “He died at 25 and lived to be 70.” It took me a few seconds to understand what it meant.

How many people do you know that stumble along through life? Trapped in that hamster cage, racing around on that wheel called life, and going nowhere fast? My guess is that it is almost all of us.

We get our first job and love the taste of money. We stop doing the crazy fun things we loved as kids and we work more and more. We go to school, acquire new skills and knowledge and now we have access to even more money. It’s like a drug, our addictive need for more money and success.

Now we have a spouse and kids and two dogs and homes that get bigger and bigger. Our cars get fancier and we take more expensive vacations every year, even though our favorite pond from when we were kids, is just around the corner.

Life is on auto pilot; drop the kids off at school, rush to work, rush home, check our phones all through the family dinner, check the kids homework, tuck them in bed, and fall over exhausted, not able to remember what you did that day.

Fast forward and you are retired, the kids are grown, married and have kids of their own. You and your spouse are strangers, your connections in life have disconnected, with nothing in common any more. The spinning wheel in your cage has finally slowed down and you have nowhere to go.

What happened to the kid that raced down the street with baseball cards clipped to their bicycle wheels? Who loved to go sledding down the hill until their fingers were blue? That loved to sit around the campfire under the stars? That climbed up on a roof, just on a dare?

That kid died at 25 and was buried at 70.

Live life fully. Do the very same things you loved as a kid. View life through the eyes of your grandchild and be silly. Pick the wildflowers, ride a bike, go on a picnic, go camping, go swimming no matter how ugly and wrinkled your body is.

I just bought a tent in January, as the after Christmas sales were surging, and can’t wait to sit by the campfire this summer with my grandkids and my sweetheart.

Live life before it is too late.