Musings

It occurs to me that being 40 means that it’s a slow, inexorable nosedive into the abyss known as “old age”.

At least that’s what I hear. All the dudes who are older than I am tell me so.

I say, “Screw you guys. I’m still climbing uphill.”

Of course, that would explain why my legs burn a little more quickly walking up several flights of stairs. I’m walking uphill now.

Is it age or is it expectations? At which point does the mind lose the battle over the matter? After all, decay and death are built into the system. They have to be. Without death, there would be no renewal and no means of preventing the complete exhaustion of resources. The balance requires all organisms to return their gooey, fleshy parts to the greater collective that is Life on Earth for reuse.

I’m not quite ready to return my parts, thank you very much. They’re still gently used, so I’ll be hanging on to them for quite some time.

Today at Chuck E. Cheese, I was reminded that parents go to great lengths to make their children happy. Children are essentially easy to please.

The lesson: listen to your audience because the path to happiness is seldom as complicated as we think it is.

I’ve learned a lot from these white doors.

Painting them was not as hard as I’d imagined. The result is far better than I expected. Hanging them back up was easy enough. Installing the new knobs was no big deal.

But then they wouldn’t close. What the…? Why the…? How the…?

Nothing lined up.

Nothing hit the right way.

Nothing went smoothly.

Paint started chipping. Screws starting slipping. Holes started losing their thread. Did I mention that a newly-installed closet rod and shelf ripped right out of the wall because of the weight right in the middle of all the door drama? Yeah, that happened, too.

But, in the end, I got the doors shutting smoothly, quietly.

The lesson is that nothing is simple and nothing is so difficult that time, patience, and determination cannot help. As I reminded my friend the former Buddhist monk the other day, life simply is. We judge it and label it. Hard. Easy. Sweet. Bitter. These words are simply our subjective, momentary take on what is.

Life simply is. Live it. Love it. Get up, and do it all over again.

On the first day, the sweat and ache of a day of hard, physical labor is supremely gratifying. Adrenaline and strain leave he muscles weary yet oddly invigorated. Arms and legs are heavy. Abs tremble slightly when flexed. A hot shower serves to heighten the feeling and alleviate the tightness.

This is how our ancestors lived, hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution created this idea that all men and women must find jobs and labor primarily so that others might become rich. Our ancestors, salt of the earth, laboring for their very survival…

The next day, it just hurts. You press on. There’s a mountain of crap to do and just a few days during which to do them before you have to go back to laboring for those guys getting rich.

10 day into it, you pretty much just want to sleep. Or maybe slip into a wee coma for a spell. It doesn’t matter which just so long as the pain goes away.

Moving has taught me this: the salt of the earth work their collective ass off. Nobody was happier to see those movers carrying the REALLY heavy stuff around than I was.

At 40, I don’t know how many of these kinds of moves I have left in me.

My youngest is tall for his age, but he’s still young enough to be small…at least in his Daddy’s eyes. His Mommy’s, too.

His Mommy had the idea: why not make his closet bar and shelf at his height? So, in his brand new room, I put the closet bar and shelf low enough for him to use it.

It seems trivial, but when the top of your head reaches only as far as your Daddy’s sternum, a detail like that makes all the difference in the world.

Watching my children, I am poignantly reminded how incremental learning truly is.

My littlest taught me about multiplication last night. My oldest taught me about squaring equations. Both occurred in the span of an hour and a half.

At 40, the stuff I have learned has taken me a lifetime to acquire. There is so much more to learn and forget.

The increments begin at birth and end at death. To believe otherwise is to squander all the opportunities in between.

When life is tasting a little bitter, our friends often find a way to be there for us. Though it’s nearly midnight, a note written by someone a few hundred miles away magically appeared on my pillow.

Life tastes a little sweeter.

Thanks for note and the great quote you wrote inside it:

“My family and friends
are the best things I’ve known –
Through the eye of the needle
I’ll carry them home.”
— John Mellencamp

Jon Bon Jovi turned 50 recently. That means he is almost exactly 10 years older than me. I must say, he looks great for a dude at 50. He still rocks, too. I can’t believe that I am still listening to Bon Jovi 20 years after high school.

Go, Jon. We can all learn a little something from you.

There are more scientific terms for how I feel right now, but “pooped” says it all.

“Hurting” says the other part that pooped doesn’t cover.

Should I have used quotes around pooped the second time? This time? Who knows the rule? Somebody save me here.

I like Shiner. I used to miss it until it started showing up here. I am glad for that.

My forearms hurt. When were the last time yours hurt?

I’m pooped.

I actually did write something on Wednesday, and I posted it on another site: http://buildingconfidentleaders.com/2012/03/08/others-and-your-purpose-a-pers…>I just forgot to link back!