Recently, someone told me I was interesting, and it wasn’t a pick-up line.

Since I’ve never won a Pulitzer Prize, rocked the medical world with my discoveries or been recognized in any way for doing something out of the ordinary, let alone extraordinary, I was more than a little surprised. I challenged my acquaintance to back up her claim. As she began to tick off a list of things I’ve done, I realized that by living long enough, anyone has the potential to sound interesting.

The key word here, of course, is “potential.”

As babies, our lives are blank pages. Some of us are given sticks we must sharpen to scratch out our chapters, while others receive pens that write easily. The books of our lives might be short or long, tragedies or comedies. Each will include crises and turning points. Like a good Greek tragedy, bad things can happen for no apparent reason. How we handle each plot point determines the ending.

I’ve been feeling a little fatalistic lately, and in my head I hear Tim McGraw singing “Live Like You Were Dying.” I’m still too practical to do everything I want to do (and skydiving is NOT on the list). But I am going to do more. I don’t know how many chapters I’ll write before the last one, but when it’s finished, I don’t want my “shoulds” to outnumber my “coulds.”