Another Step Closer to the Grave (an uplifting birthday message)

It's my birthday today—I know, happy birthday to me! I'm 44 years old, which is veering dangerously close to half a century. 2068 is as close now as the year I was born for god sake! 44 years before I was born was 1936. And that sounds so ridiculous that I've just used a calculator to make sure it was correct (it is).

I've never been a big fan of birthdays. Mainly because I don't like being the center of attention, and birthdays tend to do that to you. But as I've gotten older, I've liked them even less. Maybe it's because I've been aged out of more and more things.

Still time for 50 under 50

Eevery time I see a “30 under 30” list ( Forbes I'm looking at you) —and now even a “40 under 40” list I am slightly (fine, very) indignant. Whether it's Forbes or whoever else, it irks me a little that I'm now too old to feature in any of those lists. I find myself looking for—or at least being pleasantly surprised when I stumble upon—posts about older people achieving great things. You've probably seen them. There's that one about Colonel Sanders from KFC who didn't start the restaurant until he was in his fifties. And Samuel L. Jackson —wasn't he a carpenter or something until his forties or fifties when he "found fame" and success in Pulp Fiction? (I might have some of these details wrong, but you get the idea.) These inspiring lists are oddly reassuring. I mean, I'm not as old as Samuel L Jackson was when he starred in Pulp Fiction (yet) - Side note, he had been in 24 movies before that, the first being when he was 24....but let's skip over that.

I think I'm too old to be the Rose of Tralee, you can't be over 30. I'm also too old to be an escort for a rose on the Rose of Tralee (you can't be over 32).

Life in Weeks Calendar

Recently, I took up something new—well, "new" to me anyway. I heard Brian Pennie, PhD talk about it in one of his posts or podcasts. He mentioned he has it on his fridge. Now, I don't have it on my fridge (I think that would freak my family out), but I started a "Life in Weeks" calendar. Basically, it's a sheet of paper with a dot for every week of your life, assuming you live to be 100 (which, let's be honest, I probably won't). Each week, you color in a dot. It's a visual representation of how much of your life is gone, where you are in it and how much might be left (a pretty big might, I concede).

Here it is, right up to date:

I find it to be... well, it depends on the day. It's a mixed blessing, I have to tell you. Some days, I'll look at it and go,

"Jesus Christ, I'm pissing away my life. I need to do more things. I need to achieve more. I need to be better,"

But it's a thought process in a sort of positive, uplifting way. Other days, I'll look at it and think,

"Holy crap, I've gotten absolutely nothing done in the last 44 years. What am I doing with my life?"

And it'll send me into the depths of despair.

The Life in Weeks calendar can also make you realize how little time you may have left with some people in your life. Depending on how you've done it (I've marked mine with my kids' ages and parents' ages and stuff), it can be a double-edged sword. It can be very inspiring and make you reach out to people you haven't talked to in a while. Or it can be sort of terrifying. But I guess either way, whether it's inspiring or terrifying or somewhere in between, it's a good thing. Whatever it's doing, it's making the unconscious conscious and making me more aware of how I spend my time.

All We Have Is Time

I've become a real believer in time being my most valuable resource—the one thing you can't get back. You know, I used to always say things like, "Well, that's two hours of my life I'm never getting back," after watching a bad movie or reading a lousy book. But actually, every hour is an hour you're not getting back. We're not getting any of it back. I can't get any of the 44 years so far back. I won't be able to get the 10 minutes I've spent writing this blog post back (hope it was worth it, and yes I appreciate the irony of saying that time is precious and limited....and then spending it writing a blog post about that).

So I'm far more conscious and aware of spending my time wisely. One of the things that becomes harder to do as you get older—if you have kids in particular—is to have that time for yourself and to appreciate it, to enjoy it, and to believe you deserve it. There's a huge guilt, I find as a dad, to—well, effectively—not want to spend time with my family sometimes because I want "me time." I want time to do my own thing or to do things that I enjoy doing for their own sake and for my own sake.

Sometimes it's healthy, creative stuff like going off to play sport. Sometimes it's just to mess about on the internet. But it's my time. And I've found that I'm constantly trying to protect that time—not just from the obvious family demands but from busy work or doing things that don't add any value to my life. These are things that I describe as something I "have to do," and a lot of it is DIY.

I bloody hate DIY. I hate cleaning, tidying, painting, gardening—hate it all. I just think, with so little time on this planet, to spend it doing any of that stuff just doesn't make sense to me.

But I digress.

Luke, I am your father

Interesting side note, that isn't the quote! (he actually says "No, I am your father")(it's true, see)

As I enter my 45th year, another thing that's started to catch up with me is parallels with my parents' lives. There's a photo we've had in our house since—I guess maybe 1988 or so. It's a photo from my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. I realized recently that I'm in it (obviously), and I'm around the age in the photo that my eldest son is now. And recently I realised that I am older today than my dad was when that photo was taken.

I've always thought of my parents as grown-ups—as adults—which, again, of course the have been since I've known them. But I wonder (and I must ask him), when he was my age when that photo was taken, did he know what he was doing? Or was he as clueless as I am? I have no idea what I'm doing in life most of the time. It's weird to think that either they didn't either—which would make me feel more comfortable—or that they did know what they were doing, which would make me feel worse. Because again, I'd be like, "What the hell am I doing with my life at my age?"

I still laugh at farts. I still laugh at people falling over. I still laugh at stupid cat videos. I still feel occasionally like a 12-year-old trapped in the body of a 44-year-old.

And you know what? That's not necessarily a bad thing. There's an expression that says,

"You have to grow old, but you never have to grow up,"

I think there's an element of truth in that—that I'm still quite young at heart (which is a very nice way of saying immature).

Another Year Older, Not Any Wiser.

That expression, too—"another year older" always bugged me way more than it should—I'm not another year older; I'm literally a day older than I was yesterday. This concept of time is a little wishy-washy, right? (That's a scientific term.) We mark these milestones as if something significant has happened, but it's just a collection of hours, days, and minutes. I think of this a lot in terms of the legal implications. Where you have a legal age limit (whether for driving, sex, voting, acohol, whatever) there's a mad notion where doing something one day is illegal and against the law, but the very next day it's legal. Just by virtue of time moving on 24 hours. Mad when you think about it.

4,000 Weeks

There's a book called "4,000 Weeks," by Oliver Burkeman which might be where the idea of this Life in Weeks chart came into popular culture. It's based on the concept that the average human life is about 4,000 weeks long. It asks people to take another look at time management and how they manage their time through that lens.

I'm deep in my midlife crisis years at the moment—kind of wondering what's it all about and what's my life's purpose. Should I be doing something greater for the greater good of humanity? Or cats? Or my kids? I don't know.

There's an idea in the book—I'm paraphrasing wildly here—but it basically says you're actually not that big a deal. Even if we have an overinflated sense of importance and ego, this notion that we're somehow going to change the world or that we should, or that our purpose is some big grand thing out there waiting for us to go and change the course of world history—it's kind of egotistical and insane.

I've become quite interested in this. The book talks about how Steve Jobs said he wanted to put a ding in the universe. But like, did he really? In the sense that 100, 200, 500, or 1,000 years from now, will anyone know who Steve Jobs was? Even the most important, famous, accomplished people out there are tiny and insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

If you want to test this for yourself, name 100 people who were born in the 1700s and what they did. Go ahead, I'll wait. (I can't do it either.) There have been billions and billions of people who have been born since then. Many of whom have achieved incredible things that we could only dream of achieving....and you have absolutely no idea who they are. To think that you're going to make this big, colossal, cosmic historical difference—it's kind of really egotistical and insane. It's also unrealistic and unattainable for the rest of us.

What's it All About?

So maybe the point is to focus on the small things—the moments, the people around us, the things that bring us joy (like laughing at farts). Maybe it's okay not to have some grand purpose or to be on some "40 under 40" list. Maybe it's enough to just be here, making the unconscious conscious, and trying to spend our time wisely.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a dot to color in on my life calendar.

#Life #Birthday #LifeInWeeks #4000weeks #Time