©2015
This past was a big week for birthdays in our family. Last Saturday, the United States turned 239. I have no idea what an appropriate gift is for a 239 year old Republic, but the Supreme Court appears to have given it an excellent one in the end of gerrymandered districts. If I could afford it, I’d take away SuperPACs and give it publicly funded elections too … but evidently none of us can afford that (sigh).
Also celebrating a birthday on July 4 was my Mom (so, Happy Birthday Mom). And then on Sunday, July 5, I completed my 50th solar orbit and celebrated birthday number 50. Since this is my 50th birthday, and since I was apparently supposed to have learned some important and valuable lessons by this point in my life (whoops), I understand that it’s appropriate for me to stop here, reflect back, and see if there’s anything I can share that will be of value. So, in no particular order (and with a staggering lack of premeditated forethought), here are some of my random thoughts on life on the occasion of my 50th birthday.
1. Develop and Use Your Imagination
One of the rules that my Mom had for us growing up (one that I really didn’t like at the time but have since come to genuinely appreciate) was that my younger sister and I weren’t allowed to watch TV (other than the rare instructional TV show and the Sunday night routine of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom followed by the Wonderful World of Disney). We were, however, allowed to read as much as we wanted to (and did, voraciously plowing through a fairly ridiculous number of books). This “no TV” rule lasted until I was 10 years old (at age 10 I was allowed to choose a show to watch … I chose the Six Million Dollar Man because … well because Steve Austin is cool that’s why). As a result, I spent the first decade of my life having to make a lot of my own entertainment as opposed to being fed it. Mom was also a big believer in the “get out” method of parenting (as in, “get out of the house and don’t come back until I ring the bell for dinner”). As a result, I had a LOT of time in the backyard and in our neighborhood to run around and entertain myself. There’s no question in my mind that the imagination I have today is a direct result of this rule and the time I spent wandering around and just making stuff up to pass the time.
2. Take Care of Yourself
So here’s one of those totally obvious things about life that most people REALLY don’t pick up on until about age 30; you know that body you were born with? Yeah, well it’s the only one you get, and it has limits. Sadly, I was NOT a child who had respect for my body. My attitude was that it was a tool to be used and abused as needed to accomplish whatever it was I thought I wanted to do. And, to paraphrase the Emperor, I have paid quite the price for my lack of vision. As I noted in my blog some weeks ago (while writing about my business life), you can in fact work yourself nearly to the point of death … at 32. All it takes is overwork, poor diet and punishing workouts and you will be right there on the Operating Room table just like me. Of course, this is not entirely our fault. Most of us are born with bodies that can take a lot of punishment, especially early on. This is because nature has been making young humans for quite a while now and it’s gotten pretty good at making most of them pretty durable. Unfortunately, many of us take that gift from nature and incorrectly learn that it’s OK to punish and abuse our bodies because they will recover (we can simply work out harder to lose that weight or take some extra time off later to recoup and start over). For most of human history, this mistake wasn’t terribly costly because, well, we tended to die before what were doing to ourselves came back to bite us in the butt. But lately (which is to say in just the last couple of centuries, and really in the last 100 years in particular), a funny thing has happened; our bodies have suddenly been called on to last far longer than nature is used to having to keep them around. The good news is that nature made us incredibly adaptable, and given the speed of this change, we’re doing remarkably well. But nature needs your help. If you’re a young person reading this essay, know that there’s an increasing likelihood that you’re going to live to be far older than you may think and the ability your body has to just recover and rebuild itself? Yeah, that slows down … a LOT, and everything you’re doing to it now will make it harder for it later. Plus, there are going to be things you can’t predict. You might end up with Degenerative Disc Disease that’s so bad that you end up needing multiple artificial disc replacement surgery (that would be me again). Fortunately for me and some of you, science is doing an impressive job of helping us out. I have an awful lot of titanium holding my lower spine together these days, and there are many things that, at 50, I’ll never do again, but the fact is that, as a result, I take a walk around my neighborhood every morning and not a wheel around it. Bottom line; science can help, but no one can do more for your health than you.
3. DON’T Be In A Hurry
Along the same lines, as you grow up, try to remember that you only get to be each age once, so try to take advantage of as many opportunities as you can at each stage. I don’t know anyone who was in more of a rush to grow up than I was. Until recently, no matter what age I was, I always wanted to be older, but in my rush to “skip to the end” I missed a few things that I probably shouldn’t have. As I’ve gotten older, I find that I admire friends who did things that seemed totally crazy at the time. One high school friend left a promising career on Wall Street and went into the mountains of South America to teach math to poor children for a few years. Another friend who is a teacher left his job and decided to teach English to prison inmates. And in one of the craziest yet coolest examples, I have another friend who just decided to go to Thailand for a year, and when she got tired of that, signed on to a cargo carrier as a crewman so she could get to Australia. There were a lot of reasons that most of those things wouldn’t have worked for me when I was younger, but if I could be younger now, I have to say, the ideas are a LOT more interesting to me. The bottom line to this point is that getting going right away on money and a career etc. is nice, but you can’t buy certain experiences, so have a few.
4. NOTHING Lasts Forever, So Enjoy It When You Have It
Few humans are more of a “creature of habit” than I am. I dig routines. I’m not afraid to experiment, but when I find what I like I tend to stick with it. The problem is things constantly change. That restaurant you love? It won’t be there forever, or if it is, there will come a time when it won’t be the same anymore. When cool stuff happens, when you find that place, that moment, that group of friends, make sure to appreciate it in that moment, because it is in the nature of things that it is temporary. I have a lot of “food” based examples of this lesson. I’ll never forget the dessert cart that American Airlines experimented with on the Chicago to Portland run over a decade ago. Seriously, this was a thing (I have no idea if it was sponsored by the Portland Chamber or something, but what an AWESOME idea). They literally had a cart that they brought down the aisle, and every passenger who wanted one, got a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a little bowl with whatever toppings they wanted (the cart had chocolate, caramel, strawberry). It was a crazy good idea, and as much as I wanted it to, I knew it wouldn’t last, so I tried to enjoy every bite. Life is full of cool moments that won’t happen again. You can be sad about that fact later if you want, but when you’re there, love it.
5. Friends Are Important
This one is pretty obvious so I don’t have to say a lot about it. As an adult, I’ve become one of those people who is a gatherer of past friends, and knowing where they are and that they’re OK is important to me. Perhaps the single coolest thing to me about Facebook and other social media is its ability to create a sort of virtual room where all of our friends can be found. It’s a place where they periodically check in and say hi. You know that they’re alive and safe (or having a challenge and need you to reach out to them), you see what they’re up to, what they’re thinking about, every now and then you see a picture, it’s a good thing. But having friends that you can and do talk to and listen to is an incredibly important part of being human. Don’t miss that part.
6. Marry Well
This is a tough one because you can succeed or fail at marriage without that success or failure necessarily having that much to do with you. I will have known my wife for 32 years next month, and we’re only a few months from our 26th Anniversary. Our marriage has, at this point, “worked.” But why it worked is the thing I want to get at. There’s a saying that “women marry men thinking they’ll change and they don’t, and men marry women thinking they won’t change and they do.” In my observation of people over time, I find that it isn’t so much that we were all lying to each other about who we were (when we got married in our 20s), it’s more that we had no idea (and had no way of knowing) who we were going to be as people decades later. The truth, of course, is that we ALL grow and change over time. And the further truth is that here are, in fact, lots of things you CAN do to help your marriage. One of the best pieces of advice my wife and I ever got came from our interview with the Minister who married us. We both did a bit of an eye roll when he insisted on this meeting (we’d known each other for over 6 years already, had lived together for over 2 years, we kind of figured we had all that worked out and that it was a waste of time), but we were wrong. One of the things the Minister talked about was using “I” messages. For example when you’re upset about something … so you don’t say “you did this,” or “you make me feel terrible when…” but rather, “I feel like this when that happens.” It may seem like a subtle change in semantics, but we’ve found it to be a really helpful tool in getting through difficult conversations. But while there are things you can do (and by the way, if you get married, DO THEM), ultimately, when you get married you really are just making your “best guess” and hoping that the two of you change and grow in ways that are compatible. So make your best guess possible and then hope you grow together.
7. If it doesn’t kill you, it’s going to make a great story, (and either way, make sure it leaves a mark)
Have you ever gotten a little cut or something that stings like a sonofabitch and then you look at it and there’s basically no blood and no mark at all. This always depresses me and makes me feel like a wimp for complaining (or just feeling pain). I prefer the accidents where there’s a scar, this way I have a story to tell. But what I really mean by this lesson is that, especially if you’re like me, crazy crap IS going to happen to you. Readers of this blog know that, in the Navy alone, I was nearly killed by helicopters twice, and I ended up being part of a nuclear weapons mishap and a riot in the same 24 hours. None of those experiences seemed particularly fun at the time, but they sure do make great stories now. Basically, the point is that life is often FULL of adventures, and at this point I’ve gotten better at recognizing that today’s disaster stands an excellent chance of becoming tomorrow night’s harrowing, exciting and interesting dinner story.
8. ALWAYS Listen to your “little voice” (especially when it runs counter to “advice”)
I kind of assume that everyone has a little voice, and if you don’t, I’m not sure how you’ve made it this far. My little voice has been talking to me since I was a child. I don’t always listen to it, but I’m ALWAYS sorry when I don’t. My little voice told me that I should move to the desert southwest when I left the Navy half a lifetime ago. I didn’t listen (until two years ago, which was long after I nearly died from exposure to stacchybotrys and subsequently discovered that the desert is where my body is healthiest and happiest). My little voice told me to get out of the stock market in October of 2007. I didn’t listen. That little voice inside you, the one that knows whether you should or shouldn’t say or do something … it’s almost always right, and NOT listening to it can even cost you your life. When I was 15, I was walking to school on a snowy day and, being the rather careless idiot that teenagers often are, I was amusing myself (as I walked under the Winnetka Ave. train underpass) by walking with my right foot on the sidewalk and my left foot in the road. As I got to the far side of the underpass my little voice shouted at me “STEP UP!” It was so forceful that I did so. About one second later a skidding station wagon came up from behind me and hit the curb at about 25 mph. The car came so close to me that one of the rivets (that had held the missing detailing on the side of the station wagon’s doors) actually grabbed and tore a whole in the left leg of my jeans. The force of the interaction also spun me and threw me into a snowdrift immediately in front of me. My friend who was walking with me to school that day (E.B. Dangerfield) was a few steps behind me and saw the whole thing (I, obviously, didn’t) and was amazed I wasn’t killed. Not all of the things the little voice tells us to do are so life and death of course. Many times the little voice is just your “gut instinct.” Well, my advice is to go with it. In my experience, your instinct about the right thing to do is going to be right a LOT more often than any other input you have. This is especially true when you’re contemplating a big decision and seeking advice and input from others. Most of the time, you already have an idea about what you should do, but you’re not sure, so you seek out “experts” and others to either confirm or deny what you think. If you truly have no idea what to do, that’s fine, but most of the time, somewhere in that process, your little voice will start talking to you. When it does, LISTEN TO IT.
9. Let Yourself Off The Hook
If you’re like me, you punish yourself for your mistakes. You relive them a ridiculous number of times and wish more than anything for a time machine so you can undo them. I am still learning that this effort is a complete waste of time, but at this point in life, even if I haven’t quite learned to stop beating myself up entirely, I at least intellectually understand the futility and stupidity of doing so. You WILL make mistakes. Some of them will be BIG ones. If you’re like me, some of them may render you permanently disabled in some way. Others may cost you a literal fortune. They’re valuable lessons (provided you don’t repeat them) and I’m saying you should forget them, but even if you think they’re your “fault,” try to let them go and let yourself up (see lesson 7 above).
10. Enjoy it
This is another HARD one that I’m still working on, but as you hit my age and mortality starts to become more real and you start to realize that “this is it,” the importance of NOT waiting for some later time to enjoy your life starts to really hit you. It’s a good thing to have a bucket list, but it should be a “living document” that changes, and it changes because you’re occasionally knocking stuff off of it. I don’t want you to blow your entire savings account tomorrow or to be completely irresponsible, but don’t wait for “someday” … because someday is TODAY.
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