Musings at Altitude

As I’ve grown older, I can’t help but think of the things that affect me today that didn’t seem to affect me before.  I now dwell on things for extended periods of time and I find myself much less patient (although I’ve never really been patient).  I have a sense of urgency now that didn’t exist before – at least not for the same reasons, and I’ve shortened my time frames on things to a short number of years and sometimes even months rather than decades or careers (like pursuing a 20 year career in the military – which I came up 5 short in active years though finishing in the reserves).

But in these last 5 years through my mid 40’s, the thinking has turned to pondering and the pondering to musing – so here are some current thoughts on the affects on me of middle age:

(1) Mortality is sinking in.  In the last few years, I’ve lost business partners and friends; friends have lost parents; friends have lost spouses; friends have lost children; and we’ve lost parents.  With age, the frequency of loss accelerates and it’s rare to go more than a quarter now without that call or email coming in of another sad moment for someone close and thus for me.  When I was young it seemed like every 10 years I would experience the sadness of death.  In my 20’s and 30’s maybe every 5 years.  In my later 30’s and early 40’s, maybe every year, and now it’s so frequent that my prayer list is lengthy and my hearfelt sadness ever constant for those in pain.  Immortality is truly sinking in.

(2) Urgency to make a significant impact is building.  I’ve always been one that felt a keen sense of urgency to have things happen fast.  But the urgency now isn’t just about business, it’s now also about urgently affecting the lives of those I touch and also urgently making a difference that can change whatever “corner of the world” I’m part of.  I believe we can all make an impact in every situation we’re in, but I believe we’re only graced with the chance to make “significant impacts” at certain times in our lives and we’re probably best prepared for that significant impact when we have decades of experience behind us and decades of opportunities ahead of us.  Now is the time.

(3) Desire to have deeper and more meaningful friendships is growing.  I’ve always said in business that it has to be more than just about the office – it has to be about a shared journey in life.  Now more than ever, that is a priority for me.  In all of our lives, in both business and personal affairs, their are intense moments of exhilaration and then intense moments of frustration or despair.  Friends provide that much needed and natural calming affect that roll you back from the highs and pull you up from the depths of despair.  Being at either point – extreme high or extreme low – for too long can be dramatically bad.  Friends know that.  Friends help you through that.

(4) A longing for lasting memories is emerging.  I don’t remember much.  In fact, a joke in my family is that I don’t remember yesterday.  There’s some truth in that.  I’ve been known to say that my mind is a FIFO buffer, “first in, first out”, and when any new event comes up today, something from my recent passed has to be shoved out for that new memory to go in.  But I’m at a point in my life where I want trips to be meaningful, and I want events to be memorable, and I want relationships to be enduring, and I want “down time” to be intimate.  I am blessed with a wonderful companion for life in my wife who remembers everything so I don’t have to right now.  But when we’re both sitting on our porch swings looking at the mountains and thinking back on those always special times, I don’t want to remember based on her recollection, I want to smile in remembering based on my own memory.

There’s so much more about middle age that I can and probably will write about at some time.  I wonder now if my car or my body will be the first to break down.  The car has 192,000 miles on it, and my body has close to 2,000,000 air miles on it.  I wonder now if my risk tolerance is as high as its always been – going without pay for many months, loading up the credit cards with company debts, changing business paths on a whim without thinking through long term consequences – but I’m not necessarily anxious to find out.  And I wonder if the world is spinning itself into a complete and insane cycle of intolerance or if this is just more visibility into the way the world has always been.  But these and so many more can wait till another day and another time.