This morning I found myself watching Deep Impact again.
The movie came out in 1998. I was 26 years old when I first saw it. At the time, one scene stood out to me. The government announced that anyone over the age of fifty would not be eligible for the lottery that determined who would be allowed into the underground shelters to help rebuild humanity after the comet struck Earth.
At twenty-six, I remember thinking, Man… that really stinks for those people.
It seemed logical. If humanity had to start over, you’d naturally choose younger people who could have children, work longer, and build a future. I never questioned the decision because, quite honestly, I wasn’t one of the people being excluded.
I was safely on the right side of fifty. This morning, twenty-eight years later, I watched the exact same scene. Only this time… I’m fifty-four. For the first time, I wasn’t watching the people who still had a chance. I was watching the people who didn’t.
Nothing about the movie had changed. The script was the same. The actors were the same. The dialogue hadn’t changed by a single word. The only thing that had changed… was me. It made me realize how many stories quietly transform as we grow older.
When we’re children, we identify with the kids in the story. As teenagers, we understand the rebellious young adults. As young parents, we suddenly sympathize with Mom and Dad instead of rolling our eyes at them. One day, without even realizing it, we’re older than the “older adults” we used to think had everything figured out.
The stories stay the same. Our perspective doesn’t.
I don’t think this only applies to movies. It applies to life. At twenty-six, retirement sounded like something so far away it barely existed. At fifty-four, retirement isn’t just an idea. It’s something you actually calculate. At twenty-six, I measured life by how much time I had ahead of me.
Today, I find myself measuring it more by how I spend the time I have left. Oddly enough, that isn’t depressing. It’s clarifying. When you’re younger, you spend a lot of time trying to become someone. As you get older, you spend more time trying to become the person you were meant to be all along.
The things that once seemed important begin to fade. Titles matter less. Opinions matter less. Keeping up with everyone else matters less. Faith matters more. Relationships matter more. Peace matters more. Purpose matters more. I couldn’t help but smile after that scene ended. Not because I was suddenly one of the people excluded from the lottery. But because life had quietly reminded me that every year changes the lens through which we see the world.
The movie didn’t change. I did. And perhaps that’s one of life’s greatest gifts. The best stories aren’t meant to be watched only once. They’re meant to be revisited. Because every time we return to them, they reveal a little more about who we’ve become.
One of the central ideas in Finding Your Transformative Life is that transformation often happens so gradually we don’t recognize it until we look backward. Sometimes it isn’t a major life event that reveals our growth. Sometimes it’s an old movie, a familiar song, or a well-worn book that suddenly means something completely different. The story stayed the same, but you didn’t. That’s what transformation looks like.
Troy P Zehnder 