I’m gonna roll me away tonight
Gotta keep rollin’, gotta keep ridin’
Keep searchin’ ’til I find what’s right
And as the sunset faded I spoke to the faintest first starlight
And I said next time
Next time
We’ll get it right
~Roll Me Away / Bob Seger

Books and songs are still being written about the romance of the road stretching out ahead and it’s true–there’s something intriguing about the road before us disappearing into a horizon of unknown potential.

Every mile carries the possibility that next time, we’ll do it differently.

We can, you know.

Next time, we can say the words we were too afraid to speak.

Next time, we can recognize what matters before it disappears.

How often do we get second chances? Not often. And when they come, we often don’t recognize them. That’s happened to me.

Most of the time though, I stumbled through life, doing the best I can and mucking things up periodically. We all do. It’s the nature of life.

But the bottom line is this:

The beauty of life is not in getting everything right. It’s in getting –and rcognizing– another opportunity to try.

Like a traveler rolling toward a distant sunset, we carry our mistakes with us. But we don’t have to carry them as burdens–we can carry them as maps, to show us where we’ve been and point toward where we might go.

And somewhere beyond the next bend lives that stubborn, beautiful belief that maybe this time we’ll choose better, love deeper, forgive sooner, and finally become the person we were meant to be.

The road keeps calling.The horizon keeps moving.

And as long as we’re still traveling, there is always the possibility that next time, we’ll get it right.

Just ask Bob Seger. (Here’s one of my favorites of his.)