Sean Liddle’s cake will be ablaze this year, but rather than making him feel old, it has given him new resolve. Here’s how.
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I am this year turning forty-seven years of age. Some days, I wake earlier than my dear wife, make a coffee, pawn my children off to the interweb babysitter and ponder life. When it isn’t a freakish wintry day, I do so on my new deck staring at the vultures circling overhead. (No, seriously, that wasn’t a metaphor, where I live we have huge rocky outcroppings, cows and yes, vultures.) I think about my dwindling future being a mere few years from becoming half a century old. Fifty was a geezer to fifteen year old punk-rock me, a doting fool to twenty-year old me, a guy who just needed to retire to thirty year old know-it-all me. I think about how terrible it is to come to the great realization, that we are all just cogs in the great machine and now I’m the rusty one.
Don’t get me wrong, I do wake up some days twenty years old. I leap from the covers (after a failed attempt to get lucky), rush out the door to the car and head to the gym. I lift weights, I run, I box a little bit and I chat with the other (often younger) gym rats. When I get home, protein shake in hand, I play video games, watch an action movie, goof around with my boys and again try (and likely fail) to get lucky. Those days are not as yet few and far between but they are the ones I reflect upon when I find myself in one of my age-funks. Those are days I compare to the past, back when I wasn’t just tricking myself into a false sense of young-ness. Those days of old when the engine ran from sunrise to well past midnight, filled with every imaginable nerdling pleasure I could draw from the well of western society. Those were the days of friends, comic books, arcades, fishing and girls. The days of summer so to speak (cue Don Henley).
Now, I find it is autumn. I creak a bit, I moan a bit after a soccer game, I complain a bit about “kids these days”, I whinge, a bit. Thankfully, I still have all my hair and no medical issues but that’s just genetics speaking and lifestyle and many people I know have not fared so well in the lottery of life. That doesn’t blind me from accepting the somewhat recent realization that if one steps back from family and close friends, if one were to vanish tomorrow, the number of people truly affected would be relatively small. Smaller than the media would have you believe when they say things like “city shocked at death of local cabbie” when in reality the “city” is more accurately shocked at yet another sign that they are mortal.
I still feel young. I still listen to new music (okay, not Imagine Dragons, they just plain suck). I still read comics, play World of Warcraft and drink a few on the weekend. I play sports I wear clothes that are not made by Arnold Palmer. I actively frown upon friends that became old men the moment they married and took up curling or model train diorama building. To all who look from outside, I’m a semi-mature fifteen-year old middle aged man, however reality has a sneaky little way of walking up behind you, tapping your shoulder and sucker punching your smiling, bearded, slightly graying face.
But what can be done? Many have asked that question and have failed in their attempt to answer it well. They blow their annual bonuses on cars and cottages and boats. They find a younger person to have an affair with for a fleeting secret feeling of regained youth. They react in a knee-jerk way to the situation without planning ahead to deal with the fallout. It’s natural, you want a piece of candy, you buy a bag full. The problem being that a piece now and again would satisfy your cravings just as much.
Having worked in business (among many more satisfying jobs), I know that any project and yes, your life is a project, requires a plan of action. To stay sane, I needed to work out a few things before I proceeded with project “New Old Me”, I needed goals. It’s hard to set goals when you are heading from bed to office to home and trying to fill in some empty time with fun but I did. I decided that my initial objective in life was to have a reasonably long, reasonably happy number of remaining years alive. Luckily for me, genetically all I have to worry about is heart disease (I’m probably the first person to ever write that). So, to combat that, I keep going to the gym, at least three days a week even when I want to marathon Game of Thrones, drink beer and attempt to get lucky. I eat right whenever possible and smile at the pretty girls in spandex.
Next up, I needed to be reasonable about my “potential physical existence timeline”. My French great-grandmother died at ninety-seven in her sleep, my grandfather made it to almost eighty but my father clocked out at fifty-five. She was a petite French woman with few vices who ate well and spent her days puttering. Dad when not at work was a TV-watching, golf-playing guy who as far as I know subsisted on bacon. I’m betting on my Great Grandmother for my target timeline and mimicking her lifestyle because, well, I don’t like bacon, I’m tired of golf and French!
Lastly, part of my project planning involved a good hard look at my available budget. I can afford the gym, I can afford to run and I can afford to eat decent, healthy food. My means allow for taking the boys on outdoor adventures and the occasional vacation in hot places. I can afford to do some reasonably fun things and more fun things on an occasional basis. This was good.
Based on my planning (performed on a Sunday morning, over coffee while the vultures circles) I decided that Project New Old Me was a go. That was three years ago. I have run four half marathons, I feel better in general that I have in years, my allergies are under control and I am finding that I am sleeping far better than I have since I was in my twenties. So far, I consider the project a success.
What about you? You need to make life or at least your remaining time somewhere worthwhile to you. If you have kids and/or a spouse, make it enjoyable for them. You don’t need to plan out every day but you need to make sure you don’t hit eighty and wonder why you never did all those things you should have. Being forty-seven or older (or younger if it is hitting you sooner than expected) doesn’t have to be the kick in the crotch it wants to be. It can be a beginning. Go forth. Leave people smiling. That’s my plan at least.
Photo: Flickr/t~a
Hi Sean your my dad