a Do-Over…

Mitch Schneider
May 17, 2022

When I was a kid playing stickball with a cut-down broomstick and a Spaulding High-Bounce ball with my friends in front of our apartment in Brooklyn, it never took long for someone to call for a do-over. A chance to rewind and try again. 

As I grew up and reached maturity, it didn’t take long to realize that do-overs were no longer practical, if not impossible. The real world doesn’t work that way. The workplace is unforgiving. Decisions make a difference. Choices have consequences.

It’s hard to go back. And yet there isn’t anyone I know who hasn’t yearned for the chance to take another shot. To go back and start over. I know I have. I even posted about it in  A Mulligan, here on July 11, 2021.

Toward the end of that piece, I waxed nostalgic about the possibility of second chances. The romantic appeal of another opportunity to get it right. To make a difference.

Take a Mulligan

Looking back, I have to wonder why I was looking at the possibility of a do-over — a mulligan — as hypothetical. Something that would be nice, if only

That was until a few days ago when it finally occurred to me that beginning on April 2, 2019, my whole life has been a do-over. A second chance to make right all the things I may have gotten wrong in the past. To take advantage of all the opportunities that may have been missed. If you think about it, that’s really what a Transplant Birthday is all about. A chance to look ahead and not behind.

That doesn’t mean you have to flirt with death or endure catastrophic illness to warrant a do-over. There’s no reason you can’t just stop, assess where you are and what you’re doing, and then move in an entirely new direction. Take on new challenges. Adjust and achieve.

The future can look a lot better when it isn’t burdened by the actions and missed opportunities of the past. There really isn’t anything stopping you. Is there?

Not even someone on the other team shouting you can’t. All you have to do is figure out what needs a second look — another shot — And then take it.



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