Billy Crystal’s Talk

You probably haven’t heard of Billy Crystal. Me too. He’s a known American comedian actor.

In the film City Slickers, Billy plays the part of a bored salesman. In his son’s school, he was asked to tell the children about his work.

When he stands up in the classroom, he launches a monologue which bewilders the children. However, it puts a smile on the rest of us.

“Value this time in your life, kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have choices. It goes by so fast.

When you’re a teenager, you think you can do anything and you do. Your twenties are a blur. In your thirties you raise your family, you make little money, and you think to yourself, ‘What happened to my twenties?’

Forties, you grow a little pot belly, you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud, one of your old girlfriends from school becomes a grandmother.

Fifties, you have a minor surgery - you’ll call it a procedure but it’s a surgery.

Sixties, you’ll have a major surgery, the music is still loud, but it doesn’t matter because you can’t hear it anyway.

Seventies, you and your wife retire to Fort Lauderdale. You start eating dinner at 2:00 in the afternoon, you have lunch around 10, breakfast the night before, spend most of your time wandering around shopping malls looking for the soft yoghurt and muttering, ‘How come the kids don’t call? How come the kids don’t call?’

The eighties, you’ll have a major stroke, and you end up babbling with some Jamaican nurse who your wife can’t stand but who you call ‘Mama’.

Any questions?”

Billy’s talk is a picture of a kind of life. A nonlife actually masquerading as life. A life without meaning.

For millions around the world, life is meaningless. Just existing, going through the motions. Only a little above animals.

Have you ever felt like that life in Billy’s talk? Will you be happy or fulfilled leaving the world with that kind of life?