David McElroy

On Tuesday, a California woman took a trip to the beach. Her daughter pushed her wheelchair into the water so she could feel the water at Laguna Beach rush onto her legs. Her joy was obvious, but it’s an experience she will never repeat.

This was her last trip to the beach, because she’s checking into a hospice facility to die.

For me, this bittersweet image tells a lot about the truth of the life we live on this planet. It can be sweet and joyful. It can be an amazing sensory experience. But it’s all too short — and death is always waiting at the end far too soon.

When I was a child, a year seemed like forever. Even an afternoon or a week could seem like forever sometimes. The time between one Christmas and the next was definitely eternity.

That changed slightly as I grew, but I was still always eager for the next step. Others seem to have shared this pattern. We were impatient for life to begin. Or, rather, we were impatient for what we thought life was going to be for us. We had high hopes and we believed that life would be different for us than it was for other people. We were going to be happy and successful. Our futures were unlimited.

Life would be very long for us. Death was so far away that it almost didn’t seem to exist.

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It’s easy to say you care about your spouse and children, but words are empty compared to actions. Earlier this year, a California multimillionaire was forced to decide what was most important to him in life.

Mohamed El-Erian was CEO of a $2-trillion investment firm called PIMCO. He’s a very successful and hard-driving businessman who has made a lot of money. In 2011 alone, his income was $200 million. But he shocked the financial world in January when he quit his job — not to jump to a rival firm, but to spend time with his wife and daughter.

We can all learn something from his choice.

El-Erian was forced to decide what was most important to him — his family or his income — because his daughter challenged him. Writing for Worth magazine in May, El-Erian explained his crisis of values.

He said he asked his daughter to do something — which he recalls as brushing her teeth — and the two ended up arguing about her lack of compliance. He reminded her that she had always been quick to obey him, but she asked him to wait a minute, then she disappeared briefly to get a piece of paper from her room.

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Is love the best thing in the world? Or the worst?

Do you remember your first love? I remember mine well. The world seemed perfect. Everything was right as long as I could be with her. Do you remember your first heartbreak? I remember mine painfully well. The world seemed black and dark. I couldn’t possibly be happy again, because I couldn’t be with the one I loved. You’ve felt that way, haven’t you?

I’ve been thinking about love all week, both the good and the bad, because of an experience a friend has just gone through. He sent me a note Tuesday to tell me what happened to him and ask for advice. I’ve been slow to respond, because I’m not sure what I can say that’s useful. How can you help a man whose heart has been broken?

My friend just experienced his first love and then his first break-up. The relationship didn’t last but a couple of months, but it’s changed so much for him — and he’s left confused and hurting.

We’re going to call him Josh, but that’s not his name. He’s a smart and insightful young man, but he’s struggling to reconcile the horribly conflicting emotions that took him from an amazing high to a devastating low. He described everything that had happened and then asked, “Any advice?”

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