Live your life by Ricky’s example

Ricky Padilla is an inspiration.

The Sealy kindergartner is battling what is most likely terminal brain cancer. I can’t imagine what it is like for anyone to battle cancer, let alone brain cancer. To fight this disease at such a young age is baffling. His whole, brief life will be marked by bouts of illness, hospital visits, surgeries and medical treatments.

Despite all of that, from what little I know of Ricky (I have never met him or his family in person), he seems to be a happy child, full of life and ready to live in the moment.

Not long ago Ricky got to not only meet Pope Francis, but also be blessed by him on two occasions in Mexico City. Ricky’s family brought him to Mexico for cancer treatments. There, he got to meet the pope in the hospital and at a public gathering.

In all my 50 years I have met many famous people from singers, actors and athletes to politicians and religious leaders. I have never met a pope. Young, little Ricky has one on me there. Not that there is a contest or competition, mind you, it’s just that Ricky likely has a very short time on this earth and he is clearly making the most of it.

Too often people fail to make the most out of life. Ricky reminds me that we all have one shot at this life as we know it. Whether we get five years, 50 years or more than a century, our lives are short in the grand scheme of things. What we make of our lives depends on what we do now, in the moment. We can’t change what’s behind us and we have no guarantee of anything ahead of us in this corporeal life on earth.

When I came to The Sealy News two years and two months ago, it was an attempt to salvage the wreckage of my career. I had made some missteps, combined with a health issue, which left me completely off my career track. The Sealy News was for me a new beginning. First as a reporter and later as an editor, I was able to revive and strengthen my journalistic abilities.

Along the way I took advantage of opportunities that were open to me as well as ones that simply opened when I pushed on their door. I’ve gone skydiving, paced the sidelines of an NFL game, covered rodeos and comic cons, photographed Texas Revolution reenactments and done a bunch of other things just because I could.

Sealy has been an amazing place to work. I’m going to hate to leave it behind, but that’s exactly what I’m doing. By the time you read this I will be packed up and headed to my new job as editor of the Fort Bend Star. It’s a bittersweet time for me, as I have come to love this community and the people. At the same time I have an opportunity to work closer to my home in Rosenberg at a much larger newspaper.

Fort Bend County will afford me new challenges and opportunities. There will be new people to meet and different experiences to have. I plan to milk it for everything I can. The more of life I can draw out of the county the more life I can breathe into the paper. I hope that is what the staff of The Sealy News, along with my replacement, will do when I’m gone.

Sealy and Austin County have a lot to offer. The more the staff engages the community and unearths its beauty the more they will have to offer the readers of this fine newspaper. I highly encourage them and anyone reading this to be aware of your surroundings and to open your mind to the possibilities and opportunities that abound all around you.

Be like little Ricky. Don’t live like you are dying; live life to the fullest. Make the most of what comes your way because it may be all that you get.

May God bless each one of you and may he grace us with the opportunity for our paths to cross again someday.