#15 Are you missing what's missing?

There's a brilliant organ donor campaign that ran in New York that rips your heart out. Literally. Where Milton Glaser's iconic I ❤️ NY usually sits, there's just a gap.

It hits you harder than the original by making you see what's not there. Genius. Because absence teaches us more about value than presence and it’s easy to take so much for granted.

Which is exactly what I've been reminded of this week, in ways I didn't expect.

Where we left off

Wednesday’s reunion at The Law Society was one of those curious events where you quickly slip back into conversations like no time has passed at all. It was so lovely to share a few laughs, news and stories with Aisling, Melissa, Catherine, Rebecca, Karen, Deanie, and more.

But there were also the empty spaces – colleagues who weren’t able to make it, others dealing with serious health issues, lives that have taken unexpected turns. Thinking of you, Michael.

You end up doing uncomfortable arithmetic: who's here, who's not, and why. And there's a disconcerting gratitude that comes with realising you're still upright (swinging a golf club) and functioning reasonably well, even if it feels wrong to think it.

It's like my mate who’s always tempting me onto the golf course with: “C’mon, you could be dead next week.” It always makes me laugh and I say yes more often than I probably should. Because, at the end of the day, he’s 100% right.

Looking back to see forward

I'm playing in the Charles Smirke Cup tomorrow at Leatherhead. But until this week, I had no idea who Charles Smirke was (my wife thinks I make these names up). That was until someone at the club mentioned his illustrious horseracing career. So I looked it up and was absolutely blown away!

As it happened, Charlie was one of the greatest jockeys in racing history. No less than four Derby wins (the first and last separated by an incredulous 35 years), 11 Classics, hall of fame mentions, the lot. But this south-east London barrow boy’s life story isn't one of wall-to-wall success.

In 1928, aged just 22 and already acclaimed as a prodigious talent, Smirke was banned for five years by the Jockey Club for allegedly not trying on a horse called Welcome Gift. He protested his innocence, but the racing establishment didn't care and jockeys didn’t really hold much sway in those days. The ban was later proven to be unjust when the horse again refused to race for other riders.

During five years in the wilderness, Smirke was reduced to sleeping rough on Brighton beach. When he finally returned to racing in 1933, he won the Derby the following year. But here's the thing – when he eventually retired in 1960, he walked away completely. No involvement in training or with racing whatsoever. And he took up golf again.

Maybe losing it all once taught him something about holding on too tightly. Racing's loss then became Leatherhead Golf Club's gain – although now even that legacy feels fragile as few people I’ve spoken to at the club know much about him.

12 years in a heartbeat

There was another mini-reunion this week at Maidenhead Golf Club with m@ds. Some 12 years on, we picked up exactly where we left off – same banter, war wounds, belly laughs, and our uncannily similar ability to find trouble from the middle of the fairway.

But the get-together had a tinge of sadness. Maidenhead is a little gem that’s closing at the end of the year. The council's selling it to developers for £105 million to build 1,500 homes. Despite campaigning and appeals, the deal is done. My mate even wrote to Theresa May (the local MP) about it and didn't even get a reply.

It's short-term thinking from a cash-strapped council, but there’s also an element of taking things for granted. The club has 700 members, stronger than it's been in years. The course is immaculate, a haven for wildlife and a stone’s throw from the town centre (a developer’s wet dream).

So, money talks and homes are needed, but I can’t help feeling it’s historical and cultural vandalism as the ground gets sold from right under the club.

Walking those fairways with my mate felt like old times and being on borrowed time. We were chuckling about advertising tales (an industry fast becoming unrecognisable from the past) while playing on a course that won't even exist next year.

Then a deer wandered past the 18th green, paused, got spooked and was gone. Nothing lasts forever.

You’re in the 7% club

A well-timed quote from James Clear this week:

“You are richer than 93 percent of people. Not in money, but in time. Over 108 billion people have lived throughout history. 93 percent of them are dead. You have what every king and queen, every pharaoh and ruler, every CEO and celebrity of the past would give all their wealth and power for: Today.”

It's the kind of statistic that should change how we think about everything, but it’s an uncomfortable truth that mostly we ignore. Just like the missing heart in "I NY", we only properly notice time when it's getting short or slipping through our fingers.

The Law Society do, the Smirke story rediscovered, the Maidenhead club in its twilight – we carry around these treasures without realising: time, friendships, places, purpose and people. Then something shifts – a reunion, a closure, an invitation – and suddenly we're doing that slightly morbid mental arithmetic again.

Play what’s in front of you

I’ve previously mentioned Bobby Jones, a golfing great who retired at 28, when he said: “Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots. But you have to play the ball where it lies.”

He knew about impermanence, that timing matters as much as talent. I’m sure Charlie Smirke learned that the hard way on the mornings he’d awake on Brighton beach. The missing heart in the New York campaign teaches it with brutal simplicity. My mate's golf invitations always remind me. And occasionally a long-overdue meetup and a deer running across a soon-to-be-gone golf course whisper it too.

Tomorrow when I tee off in the Charles Smirke Cup, I’ll spare a thought for the jockey who learned what mattered by nearly losing everything. I’ll think about the past and the future, but hopefully be focused on the present and the shot in front of me.

How’s your weekend shaping up? If you have one meaningful conversation, why not make it about organ donation, especially as the list of people waiting for a transplant in the UK is now longer than ever. Because when you make your views clear to your nearest and dearest, they’ll know exactly what you want when the time comes.

Before that, get out there and live each day like it’s your last – you owe it to your ❤️.