Staying Alive in Your 30s
It’s the young man’s duty to fully enjoy the drug of youth. The decade or so when he is bulletproof. Because for most of his life, he’ll be a tired, irrelevant dork. So he needs to enjoy the fraction of his existence when he’s not that guy.
The young man should sleep only sometimes and go to the gym too much. He should be broke and go to too many parties. Maybe crash a vehicle or be rude to his family. Youth should be a Navy SEAL Hell Week of debauchery, but it should last for years, and it should be a crime to regret it.
This isn't going to be a piece where I talk about how fit and strong I was back in my day. The reality was more nuanced. I never had a six-pack as a young man, but I also never got fat. This is because most of my precious youth was blowtorched away by social anxiety, so during those immortal years I just hid in the gym like a cave troll. I only worked the nightclub muscles. I always skipped leg day or ab day. I’m not a coordinated person, so for cardio I would just run sprints in simple, straight lines, so I wouldn’t get confused. Then I would go to parties wearing tiny T-shirts I bought in the Hanoi night market and drink tanker trucks full of beer.
I got to be the young man for a long time. It was magical. The Captain America serum didn’t wear off until I was 36. Then I got Achilles tendinitis, so now I have to do tedious foam rolls and stretches every day just so I can maybe not tear my Achilles tendon. Now I gingerly tip-toe around like I’m in a minefield.
But not everyone has something like that happen when they get older. You might still be fine. You might still be able to run around forever. But if you don’t injure a tendon or a joint, the first sign of death will be your face melting like a candle. One morning, the pillow creases on your cheeks won’t go away. Father Time will find you. He doesn’t forget about anyone. If he hasn’t found you yet, then he’s looking for you right now.
It’s fine. You just have to keep moving. You can do new things if you can’t do the old things. I can’t run now, so I do jiu jitsu, which I am not good at because I’m not coordinated. I only go once a week, and it’s the worst part of my week. It hurts my mind and my body. On the mat, five-foot-tall Vietnamese guys treat me like a shoelace. But this brings humility, which is also your duty to experience at some point.
Another sad day as a #WhiteBeltWarrior.
