No one warns you that getting older is pretty much one little life crisis after another. You wrestle with aging, with death, with purpose, with mattering. We never run out of things to wrestle with. Life is like a Royal Rumble in that way. There’s always something new running into the ring ready to throw us over the top rope.
One of the toughest opponents you face when you age is the narrowing of possibility. When you’re young, life is all potential. But the older you get, your options dwindle. I’ll never get to be an astronaut. Or a weather man. Or an NBA player. Or a Ninja Turtle. All things I once thought I’d be. With any luck, I have a lot of living left to do. But that living won’t be done in space or fighting foot soldiers in the sewers.
I’ve never been one to get too concerned about age. It’s just a number after all. So when I turned 40 last year, I honestly didn’t think much of it. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that hitting the next decade hasn’t at least nudged me to think about my mortality. How much time I have left. And, yes, have mini anxiety attacks over what I’m going to do…or not be able to do to be more accurate…for the rest of my life.
But a thought hit me one morning. If I live and keep working until I’m 65, I still have more career left in front of me than I do behind me. I’m sure I’ll blink and we’ll have gone over the hill. While one can think about growing older as the narrowing of possibility in their life, I find it more helpful to think of it as a narrowing of focus.
We like to feel in control. We worry about getting bored. We come up with all kinds of reasons for hitting the eject button on some version of ourselves. Getting older feels restrictive, the options dwindle, but it’s a gift too. It makes us spend our time more wisely, focused in on what actually matters.
Maybe it takes a lifetime of wrestling to figure out what you want to be when you grow up.