Old sport, you're asking the one person who most spectacularly failed to learn this lesson. Perhaps that qualifies me to teach it — like a man who fell from a cliff warning others about the edge. I spent my entire adult life trying to recreate one moment: Daisy, in Louisville, when she loved me. Everything I built — the mansion, the parties, the shirts, the money — all of it was an elaborate machine designed to turn back time. And it was magnificent. And it was futile. Here is what I learned too late: The past is not a destination you can return to. It is a country that no longer exists. The Daisy I loved was gone — replaced by another person with the same name, living a different life. I was reaching for a ghost. When you live in the past, you are not honoring it. You are refusing to be present for the life happening now. Every moment spent yearning for what was is a moment stolen from what could be. The green light at the end of the dock called to me every night. I thought it was calling me forward. It was actually holding me in place. What finally matters — and I speak from beyond my own ending — is this: You cannot unlive your choices. You cannot unmake your losses. But you can choose what to do next. That choice is the only power any of us has. Let the past inform you. Let it teach you. But do not let it imprison you. I did, and I paid the ultimate price.
