There will be a day when you can’t do what you do now,
And there will be a day when you do more than you can imagine.
There will be a day when you feel like you’re on top of the world,
And you’ll swear you’ve already seen the worst that could happen.
You’ve been to places that you don’t care to speak of,
And fought your way through nights you thought would never end.
You’ve seen the kind of dark that makes you question the sun,
And you’ve found yourself in the sunlight again.
You’ll walk around like you’ve got the world figured out,
Like you’ve seen the worst of it and lived to tell the tale.
There won’t be much that can change your mind,
Because you’ve already been through hell.
You’re in some of the best days of your life right now,
Two hours in the gym starting at nine-thirty or ten.
Your biggest responsibility is your dog,
And now and then your roommate needs a hand.
You’ve got nowhere to be and a thousand places to go.
A head full of dreams and plenty of time to chase ‘em.
You’ll look at people around you and wonder how they got so lost,
And think you’ve learned the lessons that life is still preparing.
There will be a day when you marry the woman you love,
And make plans for a life neither of you has lived.
You’ll pack up what you’ve got and make a home of your own,
With a thousand things you want and a whole lot left to give.
There will be a day when someone gives you a chance,
And another when you find a better one worth taking.
You’ll work your way into rooms you never thought you’d enter,
And find that the life you dreamed of is slowly in the making.
They’ll give you more responsibility, and then a little more,
And you’ll start to see the kind of man you thought you’d be.
You’ll find that being trusted feels a lot like being needed,
And for a while, that’s exactly where you want to be.
There will be days when you come home feeling ten feet tall,
When the good news seems to follow you through the door.
And you’ll think about the boy who once could barely see tomorrow,
And wonder how he ended up with everything he hoped for.
But there will be a day when life begins to speed up,
When the mornings aren’t your own and the evenings disappear.
The days will stop feeling like something you’re living,
And start becoming something you’re trying to get through.
There will be a day when you get called out,
When someone knows a thing or two you never thought to learn.
You’ll discover that the smartest man in the room
Is sometimes the one who knows when it’s his turn to listen.
And you’ll start to wonder if you’re quite as good as you believed,
When the things that came so easily take more than you’ve got to give.
You’ll meet people who can do the things you cannot,
And realize there’s a whole lot more to this life than you thought.
There will be a day when love asks more than you knew to give,
When the life you’ve built together doesn’t feel the way you thought it would.
You’ll learn that even she has needs she hasn’t found the words for,
And that loving her the way you know isn’t always loving her the way you should.
You’ll spend a few years learning how to listen,
To hear the things beneath the words and say what you don’t know.
And somewhere in those difficult conversations,
You’ll find that love can change without having to let each other go.
There will be good days in the middle of the hard ones.
Days when you laugh at things that used to make you fight.
You’ll learn that saying sorry isn’t always admitting defeat,
And that being understood can matter more than being right.
There will be a day when the weight of the world is on top of you,
And it won’t arrive all at once like the darkness used to do.
It’ll come in bills and promises, in expectations and mistakes,
In the quiet weight of all the things you cannot walk away from.
There will be a day when you feel like you can’t do anything right,
When the things you’ve done wrong become your best friends at night.
You’ll find yourself apologizing for things you thought you’d never do,
And wondering what became of the man you thought you’d grow into.
There will be a day when the woman you love looks at you through fear,
And there won’t be a fucking thing you can say to make it disappear.
There will be a day when you question your trust in her,
And find that loving someone doesn’t mean the road ahead is clear.
There will be a day when you question your love,
And there will be a day when your love is questioned.
You’ll learn that love is more than what you feel when things are good,
And that good intentions don’t excuse the things you should have done differently.
There will be plenty of days that you regret,
And there will be more days that you should think about more.
You’ll spend so much time counting up the things you wish you’d changed,
That you’ll hardly notice all the good that’s come and gone before.
There will be a day when you can’t handle it.
When the days you’ve been carrying become too much to hold.
There will be a day when you want to jump,
And the darkness you thought you’d beaten doesn’t seem so long ago.
And you’ll hate yourself for finding yourself back there,
After all those years of thinking you had left it far behind.
You’ll wonder how a man who’s come so far
Can still get lost inside his mind.
But there will be a day when you learn your jaw is not made of glass.
When you look at all the things you’ve lived through, and believe you can outlast.
Not because the punches didn’t hurt, or because you never fell,
But because you’ve gotten up from places you once knew all too well.
This time, you won’t feel invincible,
Not the way you did when you were twenty years old.
You’ll just learn that being broken down and being beaten up
Aren’t always the same thing after all.
And life won’t stop to let you figure it out,
There will still be work to finish and people counting on you.
You’ll keep showing up on mornings when you’d rather stay in bed,
And do the things that need doing, even when you’re not sure you can.
You’ll learn a little here, make a mistake or two there,
Find that the things that used to scare you don’t seem to anymore.
You’ll start answering questions you once had to ask,
And hardly notice how much you’ve learned.
There will be a day when they tell you that you’re doing well,
And you’ll search their faces for the things they’re too polite to say.
They’ll tell you that you’re capable, that they trust you with the hard things,
And you’ll wonder when they’ll see the man you see on your worst days.
You’ll think about the promises you made when you were younger,
About the kind of man you swore that you would be.
And you’ll hold yourself against a version of your life
That only ever existed in a twenty-year-old’s dreams.
But somewhere in the middle of all those ordinary days,
You’ll become somebody you never quite intended to become.
Not the man you thought you’d be when you were twenty,
But a man who knows there’s more than one way to get things done.
There will be a day when you call the shots,
When people look to you for answers and believe in what you’ve got.
You’ll know things that you never thought you’d learn,
And effortlessly carry things that once brought you to your knees.
You’ll become a man that others come to lean on.
A husband, learning how to love with open hands.
A friend who shows up when it matters,
And someone who can listen more than he demands.
You’ll find yourself in a life you couldn’t have imagined,
With people who are glad that you’re around.
And now and then you’ll almost let yourself believe them,
Before you look for the other shoe to hit the ground.
Because there will be a day when it all feels too good to be true,
When you wonder what the world is waiting to take from you.
You’ll look at everything you’ve been given and struggle to understand
How a boy who made so many mistakes could be a man with so much in his hands.
And maybe something will happen.
Maybe life will change in ways you never saw coming.
You’ve lived enough to know that loving something
Means there’s something you can lose.
But you’ve also lived enough to know
That not every change has come to take something away.
Some of the best things in your life began
On mornings when you had no idea what was coming your way.
There was a time you couldn’t picture leaving home,
And now there’s a life you’ve built in another place.
There was a time you didn’t know the man you’d become,
And now people look to you with faith.
And there were days when you were younger
When you couldn’t see a future past the night.
And there were days when you were twenty
When you thought you’d already won the fight.
Now you’re standing somewhere in between,
Knowing more than you did then, and less than you’d like to know.
Still afraid of what tomorrow might take from you,
Still learning how to let good things grow.
And I wonder if that twenty-year-old had one thing right,
Beneath the pride, the certainty, and everything he thought he knew.
Maybe after everything he’d lived through,
He had good reason to believe there was more life left to live.
There will be a day when you can’t do what you do now,
And there will be a day when you do more than you can imagine.
There will be a day when the weight of the world is on top of you,
And there will be days when you feel like you’re on top of the world again.
There will be days that you regret,
And days you’ll wish you’d thought about a little more.
There will be days you never could have dreamed of,
And days that make you grateful for the ones that came before.
There will be a day when you look back at thirty-three,
At a man who had so much and was afraid of what he’d lose.
And maybe you’ll wish he’d spent a little less time waiting for the worst,
And a little more believing that good things could be true.
Because there was a day when you couldn’t see tomorrow,
And there was a day when you thought you’d seen it all.
But here you are, still uncertain, and still standing *tall*.
With a whole lot of living left to do.
There will be a day.