First off, don’t buy into the whole birthday and age thing. The birthday itself, while meant to be enjoyed and celebrated, can be a disaster on your psyche if not understood. On your birthday, or I suppose possibly a day or three afterwards (right about when the hang over clears up) you have this mental realization that you magically got a year older on that one particular day. However this is simply not the case. Truthfully every second, every minute, every day, week, and month you are gradually getting older, until the climatic anniversary of the day you were born. You don’t stop to think that on that day, you grew no older than you grew the day before that day or no older than you will grow the day after today with relation to existence. While being able to understand this concept can make you feel like time is passing by and age is coming about faster and faster, subconsciously, natural progression is a lot easier to handle than the impact of one particular day aging you a whole entire year.
Now, if you want to look at things from a completely different perspective (as we all know this is one of my favorite things to do), let us look at age and its meaning. By definition age is as follows; the length of time that a person has lived or a thing has existed. The key word in that definition is “time”, and refers to “age” being a measurement of such. Ok, so what then is time? Well, Hinduism and Buddhism both believe that time is a manmade social institution that has little to no relevance on the Universe itself or it’s rhythmic of nature. And in science they will explain that time only exists to define two things. Ageing (as in this case) and movement. But the reality of time is simply that it is there but it’s not. It’s a secondary concept created with little or no true meaning or definition. That being said, time would exist without of any sort of observer (observer being you and I), but it would mean nothing. Time exists independent of man, the idea and meaning of time, however, do not. Thereby, age is time, and time has no concept, so through association, I have no age as age has no meaning. (You should probably read that again, I’ll wait……)Psychology and philosophy aside, let’s look at you from a physical standpoint. If you do not have a job that is physically demanding, as most of us do not, I urge you, or I suppose I rather insist that you get yourself a gym membership. You don’t need it to be a daily ritual, but you do need to do something. Set a goal for say, 5 times a month that you go in there. And try and raise that by a day a month, schedules permitting of course. You are going to thank me for this one. You see one of the main problems people have in their 40’s and 50’s is they lose their ability to maintain their skeletal muscle (or lean muscle if you will). Skeletal muscle is the muscle that attaches to the bone, and controls most of your movements on a day to day basis. It deteriorates rapidly in these years creating massive problems for your 60’s and 70’s. Now, I’m nowhere near my 40’s so why am I worried about this? Because it’s in your 40’s and 50’s that you begin to pay for your laziness in your 20’s and 30’s. Because in your 20’s and 30’s, chances are your nowhere near as active as you were in your teens and adolescent years. Muscle development and staying (somewhat) in shape is not necessarily about the vigorousness of your activities, but more so about consistency. A handful of days a month in your mid to late 20’s and onward will put problems such as sarcopenia, osteoporosis, and arthritis in your later years off substantially. It may seem like it’s a little early to be thinking about this shit, but it’s really not, these problems are real, and will catch up to you quickly if you’re not careful. So skip the bar stool one night a week and go get a sweat, and again, feel free to thank me later.
The brain is something you need to be concerned with as well. In fact, the brain should be looked at as a muscle, and should be worked out on a regular basis not unlike your legs and arms. What you don’t realize is this; from birth till about 5 years old all you did was learn. Everything was new to you, and you soaked all of that in. It was constant absorption of information. Then around 6 years old, you started going to school, and they started to teach you things in a more specialized manner. Math, social studies, art, english, what have you, and the information was anything but challenging, because the information itself was trivial and unimportant. It was the process of learning and the strengthening of the brain that they were actually focusing on. Once you hit grade 7 and 8, and on into high school that’s when real specialization started taking place, and things started to get harder. After high school most of us, (unfortunately myself not included) went on to college and or university, and higher learning continued. So realistically from the time you were born until the time you finished school, be it 18 or 20 something, you were in a constant state of study. What happened next? Well, in all likelihood you got a job, (doing what doesn’t really matter) and after a brief learning period things began to become routine and repetitive (of course there are exceptions, but not a lot). Raise your hand now, if you notice that around that time you started to become a little dumber. Chances are, if you didn’t raise your hand, you’re lying. I’d say 70 to 80 percent of all jobs out there do not challenge you and stimulate you from a mental stand point. And the ones that do eventually become repetitive as well and the learning will eventually stop. The brain can deteriorate just as quickly (maybe even more quickly) then the muscle in say your thigh’s or chest, if not continually worked on a daily basis. So read something. It’s as easy as that. It could be anything from Playboy or Maxim magazine all the way up to Plato or Descartes, but read something. There’s such a negative vibe associated with studying, that doesn’t necessarily have to be so. Do a Sudoku or the daily crossword puzzle, that’s what they are there for, stretch the brain, work it out a bit, watch a documentary, hell, write a blog, do whatever you want to do, but stimulate yourself cognitively on a regular basis, or else just like the rest of your body, you are going to have serious problems in the future. Think about misplacing your house keys, and how dumb you feel when you do that. Well, failure to think on a regular basis will eventually lead you to misplace where you live, then you won’t feel dumb, you’ll just flat out be dumb, and it could have been avoided with a little bit of preventiveness.This would be the time where we shift into nutrition and eating properly. Since credibility is something I somewhat cherish and enjoy, I’m going to refrain from telling you what you should be eating. I myself have 4 basic food groups, and they are as follow; pork (and pork by products), beef, deep fried, and coffee. So I’m not exactly the world’s most leading authority in this area. My sole contention has and always will be; health be damned, I’m a man and I’ll eat what I want when I want. I don’t see that changing anytime soon either. It’s all good, we all have vices, right?
And finally but most importantly, the key to holding off getting older, and the secret to success (at least relevant to this cause) is; just fucking relax. Understand and appreciate that this is nothing more than a slow walk (a really long, slow walk) from the nursery to the cemetery, so try not to care so bloody much. Think about something that is working you up and stressing you out right now. And now, discard it. It seems like it’s a really big deal today, but I can almost assure you, in 6 months or a year from now it’s going to seem ridiculous that you spent so much energy on it. Go for a walk. Laugh. Tell your mom a dirty joke, and then explain it to her when she doesn’t get it. Date someone 12 years younger than you (if you’re say 28 and younger skip that part, that’s just weird). Cut your hair how you want to cut it. Wear the clothes you want to wear. Just do you, simple and plain. Cutting unwarranted stress from your life will increase your energy level by at least a factor of 10, and you will undoubtedly sleep better, feel better, and just look better overall. Regardless of how attractive or fit you may be, there’s no bigger turn off than a guy or girl who is just a constant ball of bent up nerves. Plus it’s distracting as shit. And ALWAYS keep this in mind; Slow struts and finger rolls are not only cool as hell, but they reek of wisdom and class. And wisdom and class is priceless. I have to go take a nap, remember I’m old now. But I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, so until next time………
