The final scene of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid takes place in a Bolivian stable surrounded by dozens of soldiers ready to shoot Butch and Sundance on sight:

Sundance Kid: “It’s your great ideas that got us into this mess. I never want to hear another one of your great ideas. Ever!”

Butch Cassidy: “Australia. I thought that secretly you wanted to know so I told you.”

Sundance Kid: “That’s your great idea?”

Butch Cassidy: “The latest in a long line. We get out of here alive, we go to Australia. Goodbye, Bolivia. Hello to Australia.”

And then just before they run out of the stable to certain death:

Butch Cassidy: “Hey, wait a minute. You didn’t see Lefors out there, did you?”

Sundance Kid: “Lefors? No.”

Butch Cassidy: “Oh, good. For a moment there I thought we were in trouble.”

Among other things, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid is about the relentless march of time—bicycles replacing horses, bank security improving, law enforcement getting more sophisticated. And it’s also about optimism when surrounded not by Bolivian soldiers, but by time closing in : Australia—hell, yeah!

Then there’s that last moment—the end comes when you’re not expecting it, from an unforeseen direction and despite all of your planning . . .

I woke up this morning thinking about this because I’m in the middle of a new round of king-hell bronchitis—the fourth bout this year. And the bronchitis is an uncomfortable subset of a larger run of less-than-optimum health that’s extended over the past 12 months or so.

This is new territory for me. My health throughout my life has been robust. (I’ve always wanted to say that in context.) And further, I recognize that most of the problems have been bits of me beginning to wear out. I am, after all, officially A Man Of A Certain Age.

But if not Peter Pan, I’ve got a lot of Butch Cassidy in that stable in me as I confront these shifting circumstances: Australia—hell, yeah! The recent string of health glitches have reminded me that, like it or not, it’s finally here—My Third Fucking Act. And the question now becomes what to do with what’s unavoidably become a finite resource—time. What precisely is my bespoke version of Australia? And further, how can I ensure that it’ll fully be Hell, yeah!

This situation is complicated by the other lesson of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid—it’s never Lefors who gets you, it’s the Bolivian Army. As I’m busy constructing My Private Australia, chances are good that a battalion of something dreadful will unexpectedly surround me.

The answer, of course, is the point of William Goldman’s screenplay—it’s better to travel hopefully than to arrive. (Which, for the record, was said by Robert Louis Stevenson and not Buddha, thank you very much.)

And, yes, this is not a new problem—merely a problem that’s new to me. I’ll have a mope, cough my way through my work day, kill a couple boxes of Kleenex, have precisely one Laphroaig too many tonight and then, tomorrow, begin to fill a new notebook with ideas about My Third Fucking Act. I think I’m gonna need a big production number there.