The Funnel of Life

When I was in my twenties, an old boss imparted some wisdom that took me another thirty years or more to learn. I call him an old boss partly because it was a long time ago, and partly because he seemed old to me at the time. He was in his mid forties, a few decades younger than I am now.
I was riding home with him from work one night, having lost my drivers license after being unfairly penalized several times for speeding. Fortunately I had a boss who did not judge my bad driving habits, and one that was willing to drop me off at my house on his way home.
I was in the beginning of my career, and my marriage. He was in the middle of both of his.
I remember he started the conversation with, “You probably won’t understand this”, and I had learned earlier in life that this was a saying that older people often say to younger ones. And it is a saying that more often than not is correct.
“Life is like a funnel,” he then said, and I’m really not sure if I started listening intently because he was my boss, because nothing good was playing on the radio, or that some part of my brain intuitively knew what he was going to say was important. No matter what the reason, I became all ears as he continued.
“Every choice that we make in life seems to be the right one at the time. Marriage, kids, job; If you look at each one separately, then almost all of the time you would say you would make that choice again. But they all add up, and each choice you make seems to narrow your options for what you can do next. It’s like a funnel: at the top where initially you have a lot of room to maneuver, a chance to make changes to your course, but then things start to narrow down. Things start to happen quickly, and you find yourself almost spinning out of control in the middle of your life wondering how the hell you ever got there.
“No room to maneuver, no chance to make a change, you’re just been swept along in life by the choices you made earlier, wondering what the hell you life is going to be like when, spinning out of control, you exit the narrow neck.”
I remember the image he created as much as I do the words, maybe because I was in the funnel but still had a lot of room to maneuver, maybe because I knew I was in the funnel.
His words stuck with me, and as I aged that image took center stage in my own life.
In my late forties our roles had reversed. I was now his boss as he approached the end of his career, a situation that both of us may have been a little uncomfortable with, but nothing was ever said. I was deep into the neck of the funnel, questioning almost every choice I had ever made, and I remember driving him home from work one day and he brought up the funnel of life.
“Remember years ago when I told you about the funnel of life,” he said to me. I nodded yes and he then said. “The neat thing is that you eventually do come out of it, and it’s a pretty good feeling. A pretty good feeling.”