“So, do you have any goals for 42?” my wife asked me over dinner. She and my daughter had taken me out to celebrate the day of my birth, some 42 years ago. Forty-two is an odd, neither-here-nor-there age.
Basically, the only thing that happens when you turn 42 is boring, mundane stuff — you take up eating barbecue potato chips, you have conversations about mutual fund expense ratios and you start to ponder deep, universal questions like: Why do we have concrete AND asphalt roads?
It’s getting serious in my world!
So the question at dinner really kind of stuck with me.
“Goals for 42?!?” I said out loud, thinking about it for the first time. I hadn’t even considered it. Well, aside from taking up barbecue potato chips, but that’s legislated. There’s no choice in that.
What are my goals? Should I have some? And it occurred to me, I kind of do.
Be more like my dog is one. Not the desire to smell the foulest things found on the street. Rather, her happy-go-luckiness, her zeal for life and her unbridled excitement every time she meets someone new. Like at the dog park the other day. Her reaction to every K-9 was essentially: “!!!!!!!!HI!!YOU’RE MY BEST FRIEND!!!!!!!!”
Another? Listen more. Talk less. Don’t rush to judgment. Don’t tell people what they ought to do. Help show them the way, even if it’s not my way. I come from a family that often thinks the world is full of nutty meatheads who don’t know anything and have to be told everything. We don’t usually listen — because who would listen to a nutty meathead? — and we tell the world what we think. Because WE’RE right! And THEY’RE meatheads!
But I ran across a Gandhi quote recently that won’t leave me: “Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”
I’m working on that this year, and letting the nutty rhubarbs get a word in edgewise.
Finally, don’t just “do” stuff. “ENJOY” stuff. I got this bit of profoundness while reading a book my dad gave me called “Born to Run.” It’s about the Tarahumara of Mexico, a tribe of people who live in the remote wilds of Copper Canyon. They run vast stretches through the canyon — we’re talking like 60 miles — just for the heck of it … or to borrow a cup of sugar from a neighbor.
What struck me is that while they’re running all those miles, they have this great love and joy for what they’re doing. They’re not miserable. They’re not waiting for it to be over. It’s not just a means to an end — to get from here to there. Rather, it’s about the experience in the middle. And I sometimes lose that, whether it’s running or in life. Don’t we all?
So the Sunday before my birthday, I went and ran 12.5 miles, determined to love every single minute of it. And I did. Including the mild hallucination at the top of the Vilano bridge.
A seagull tried to convince me he was Abraham Lincoln. I just smiled and kept on running. I was loving it.
I guess those ARE goals for 42. We’ll see if they stick.
If not, I can always fall back on barbecue potato chips, and figuring out that expense ratio thing with some nutty meathead.