“I feel like I'm being chased by a bunch of guys in semi-trucks,” he said, “only I pay the guys, and I own the trucks.”

        His name was Gary, just a guy I met last week on an airplane between here and somewhere. Truth sometimes passes more easily among strangers at 35,000 feet. Gary was a treadmill guy who wanted to get off, but couldn't. There's a little of him in all of us.

        I asked him when he took his last vacation. He seemed to take as much time off as a ticking clock. “Five years,” he said. Even then, “I was thinking about deals, or making deals.” Occasionally since then, he has taken “two or three days” off at a time.

        “That's not a vacation,” I said. “That's what's known as a weekend.”

        It's good, I guess, that we are a nation of Garys, constantly seeking bigger, better, wealthier. Better that than a country of slackers who really do live in that cabin, with that dog.

        But I'm fascinated by people who live to pay their club memberships and their credit card bills, who work 60 hours a week so they can afford the boat they just bought or the too-big house they just closed on. Who live to keep up.

        I feel sorry for people who feel they're failures if they're not constantly succeeding, people for whom good enough never is. People who spend lots of time on their personal hamster wheel.

        Is life better on that boat? Is it worth the missed moments with family and friends?

        To run the race because you love it is one thing. I know some business jocks who are passionate about cranking out the hours. Life is a scoreboard to them. But to run because running seems the only option is a gigantic missing of the point.

        At 43, I make a lot more money now than I did at 23. Am I any happier? Not because of the money. I'd give back a month's salary for all the kids' birthdays I missed while covering some event I thought vitally important at the time. I'd trade another month for each of my own birthdays spent in a hotel room.

        At 42, Gary is single. He'd like to get married, he said. He's thought about it. But every time he got around to considering it, his girlfriend decided she'd had enough. “I was usually wrapped up in deals,” he said.

        The world doesn't wait for you to live a full life, and 20 years from now, nobody is going to remember the deal you made or the hours you spent at a desk. Or the newspaper column you wrote.

        A small part of the world might recall, though, the time you put into making your kids good people and your home a happy place.

        I asked Gary, “If you could change something about your job, what would it be?”

        He thought about that for a minute. I figured he'd say, “More free time, fewer airplanes, peace of mind.” What he said was, “I'd bring a few partners in with me.”

        The cabin awaits. And the dog. If that's what you want.

       Contact Paul Daugherty at 768-8454; fax: 768-8330.

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