Message in a Bottle

I miss The Police.
Reminds me of better and not so better days.
I was half way through my ride today, and what guess what floated up on my shore from 1.2 gigahertz land, but my own message in a bottle.
I looked at it quizzically, not knowing what to do at first.
Should I open it? Should I ignore it and toss it back? If I do, will I be haunted forever by the thought that I wouldn't ever know what was inside?
Okay, okay, I opened it.
Metaphorically, don't you know.
What was in it?
A message that spanned a lifetime.
Or so it seems. Or not.
Or something.
It is a rare thing indeed for me to be called on by my past life. Not that the door is closed or anything, it's just old and rusty and sometimes I forget it's even there. Seeing that door fills me with guilt for my past is what makes me who I am today, and neglecting it is a way of ignoring all the mistakes I've made.
Still, there are times when I miss those days.
There was excitement and melancholy when plowing through life throwing caution to the wind and leaving a trail of destruction in your wake.
Not that it's any different now, well it is, but not really.
Just a little less destruction.
So just what the hell are you talking about?
I don't know, just what the hell am I talking about?
For someone like me, no matter how hard I focus on the future, the past is always a reminder of what could have been.
I think of the choices I made and how things would have turned out if the dice had just come up passing instead of craps. Or the other way around.
At the very least I can say I played the hand I was dealt and I never folded.
No guts no glory don't you know.
Anyways, opening that message in a bottle opened up the door to my past and I got to peek in. I'm still not sure about what I'm seeing.
If you stare long enough into the past, the past stares back at you.
I just made that up.
Okay, not really.
I guess I gotta go in to find out. The door to the past I mean.
No guts no glory, don't you know.