Staying Young

As the years pass by, birthdays are not celebrated as they were in my earlier years. See, I don’t really make a big fuss about aging. It is just not an issue for me.

Throughout my 20s, I worked my butt off and barely took any vacation time.  I didn’t do much traveling and although I was enjoying what I was doing, there were definitely a lot of constraints that I tolerated.  It wasn’t until I turned 30 that I felt like I was truly living. The years since that milestone have been some of the best I can remember. By the way, if you missed my birthday wish last week, I did a fun little post about it here.

This past Thursday I went out to the lake to spend some time with my friend Jack on his boat. The family next to him on the dock was out on the lake as well, so we all made an evening if it. Several teenage kids were out tubing behind a jet ski, so I decided to get out there with them. Seemed like a good idea to me.

Side note, my one and only tubing experience was in Orlando back in 2005, which still stands out as one of the most fun experiences of my life. There is something about being dragged behind a fast moving watercraft while you hang on with everything you’ve got that really puts things into perspective quickly.

I like to push it to the edge from time to time just to remind myself how amazing life can be when I let go and just go with what’s happening in the moment.

It would be easy to make up excuses about why it’s not a good idea to get out on the lake and be tossed around like a rag doll, but truth be told, all of that is really just fear talking.  Just like it would be easy to come up with reasons while backpacking alone in the wilderness, or jumping out of an airplane is dangerous.

Thankfully, these things just don’t bother me.  In fact, I get energized by them. When I look back at my life, the moments that stick out to me the most are the ones that people said were dangerous or crazy at the time.

I can’t imagine living life any other way.  The ‘safe’ route just doesn’t appeal to me, and never has. 

Life, for me, happens when I let go of what society tells me is ‘normal’ or ‘age-appropriate’ and do what I feel like doing in the moment. The idea that as we get older, we should slow down and stop doing certain physical activities doesn’t make any sense to me. If I wanted to slowly decay, I’d stop doing the things that I did when I was young.

Instead, I choose to stay young by doing things that younger people do.  Sounds logical to me.

Today, I’m grateful for not only the opportunity to push myself to the limit on occasion, but for the willingness within myself to go for it.

What about you? What do you do to stay young? 

Photo: Lake Allatoona – Acworth, Ga.