August 2007: My daughter, Molly, attends her first day of kindergarten at Mary Queen of Peace School in Webster Groves, Mo.

May 2016: Molly graduates from eighth grade at MQP and prepares to enter high school.

August 2016: Molly starts her freshman year at Kirkwood High School in Kirkwood, Mo.

May 2020: Molly graduates from Kirkwood High.

Aug. 24, 2020: Molly starts her freshman year at the University of Missouri.

Aug. 26, 2020: During my morning run, I jog past Mary Queen of Peace School, where I watch a new class of 5-year-olds walk proudly into MQP for their first day of kindergarten.

The Circle of Life keeps spinning, doesn’t it? The old saying is true: The days are long, but the years are short. They fly by so fast.

What will you do today? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month?

Where will you be a year from now? What will you accomplish next year, and over the course of the next five years, or 10, or 15?

We can keep treading water, wasting our lives one day at a time.

Or we can graduate from this level to the next, and the next after that, learning new skills every step of the way.

The choice is ours.

Life marches on.

Will we?