Apply the stages of grief to your own life.

Some years ago, a researcher named Elisabeth Kubler-Ross studied lots of people at the end of their lives and came up with a list of the stages we all go through at that most difficult of times.

Here they are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

It occurs to me that we might apply them to our own lives as we're living them, especially as we get older.

First comes denial, meaning that you don't accept that you're not going to be who you thought you would. I'm not going to run my own company? I'm not going to start my own business and see it take off? I'm not going to play football in the NFL? I'm not going to . . . whatever. It just doesn't make sense that you wouldn't succeed and realize your fondest deams, right?

But then you don't. For whatever reason. And anger sets in. Damn it! If I'd just had the right backing or if I'd had my family behind me or if I'd had a few more breaks -- I could have made it! It's not fair! You're mad, at people, at companies, at the universe.

At this point, you may not want to talk to your friends and family, as you're only going to come across as mad. Not reasonable and forward-thinking: just mad. Count to ten before you start to un-load your frustrations on your friends and loved ones.

Next, according to Kubler-Ross, comes bargaining. For a dying patient, this would mean trying to make friends with God, promising to do this or that if only you can be spared. For you, the living person, it probably means asking yourself tough questions: What if I did this or that? Would it help? Is it too late? In the death stages, it's always too late. But what about in life? What if I changed spouses or went back to school or took a different job? What if I joined a church? What if I became a vegetarian? You're hoping that a change in your life, or at least life-style, might make a difference. And who knows? Maybe it would. You're bargaining.

The stage after that, again according to Kubler-Ross, is depression. If you're the person about to die, you're really bummed. If -- in our scenario -- you're the person still alive and looking for meaning in life, you're also bummed. All your possibilities -- those dreams you had -- are coming up nil. You're not going to be that pop star or that rich accountant or that entrepreneur who discovers something that will take the market by storm. You're just who you are. When you were young, you had all those hopes and dreams, and now that you're in middle age, you realize that they're not going to come true. Whoever you are at whatever age you are is likely to be who you'll be for the rest of your life. For some people, that is very depressing.

But not for everyone. Read on.

So here comes the last stage of Kubler-Ross: acceptance. For the deathbed subjects she studied, that meant understanding that they really were dying and that there wasn't anything they could do to change it. My recollection is that most said Okay. (Maybe they had some drugs to help them into that stage of acceptance, but I'm not sure: as for me, I want all I can get!)

What that last stage means, though, to those of us still alive and striving, is that, at a certain point, we have to accept the fact that we aren't going to be (1) a famous writer, which would be me, (2) an NFL player making tons of money, which may be you, (3) a celebrated cellist, (4) a future mayor of your/our city, although that still could happen, (5) a whatever or whoever we hoped we might be but that we see now is not likely to come to fruition.

Which means: deal with it. This is the hand life dealt us. This is how we played it. So we either played it or -- in poker terms -- we folded. We just didn't have the cards, and we weren't good enough bluffers.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross came up with her well-known "stages of grief" to help dying people come to terms with their irreversible predicament, but don't you think the same rules and principles might apply to us humans still trying to figure out how to live our lives and come to terms with our own disappointments? Never say die, but do understand when it's time to quit denying or being mad and just accept the life we are destined to live. And make the best of it.

Most of us are granted a pretty good life, with its ups and downs, and we learn to make do. We may have wished for grander things but probably knew we would never have them. Even in the worst of circumstances -- busted marriages, kids gone wrong, dreams up in smoke -- we had some good times, and we should remember them. Maybe it was dancing with the right guy at the wrong time or watching a kid do something cute in a school show, or making an old aunt happy at a reunion we hated to be at, but, whatever it was, we did some things right.

And isn't that what it's all about?