LOCAL AUTHOR
Imagine living your life in reverse, having all of the knowledge you do at the end of your life from the beginning? Would that change how you lived? “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart” is a book written by local ophthalmologist Rex Cole, MD, that explores that very topic.
Cole has lived here since 1971, when he came here after his residency in Dallas. He got the idea to write a book from a sermon given by his pastor at St Mark’s Episcopal Church. He started writing it before he retired but got serious about finishing it in 2020 when he was no longer practicing ophthalmology.
The premise of the book is that there are two characters: one living his life in reverse, Backwards Bob, with all of the knowledge that one would have at the end of their life from the very beginning and the other, Forwards Bob, living as we all do.
“He theoretically would have a totally different experience. Because of the experience that he has, he’ll make different decisions in life, the other Bob. And the question is, which would be better? So you’re left to kind of level that out for yourself,” Cole said. “It’s mainly [about] what’s really important in life, and how love and being loved are the most important things in life. And [it’s also about] how perhaps we grow more from the mistakes that we make than the mistakes we don’t make.”
This is a book for people of any age group.
“I think this follows a person through all the different stages of life, and everybody’s going to be at one stage or another,” Cole said. “And whether you’re quite young or quite old, I think at least at some point in the book, you can identify with that person and see what happens to that person.”
While the book is fictional, Cole did pull some elements from his personal experiences.
“They say that the firsttime novelist, a lot of their work is autobiographical, and that is certainly true in this instance,” Cole said. “Most of it is just made up, but there’s quite a bit of my experience in the book as well.”
Cole had a lot of fun writing the book but didn’t just stick to the lighter subjects.
“As it says in the book, ‘Life is not worth living without laughter, but the most important things we learn in life, we don’t learn while we’re laughing,’” Cole said. “So there’s some serious things in there as well.”
You can purchase the book — both hard cover, paperback and ebook — on Amazon.
