An infinite array of options; I’ll be aye.
My elbow tenses.
At 32 years old, my first repetitive stress injury.
Second, after a pickleball shoulder.
But this elbow is also a pickleball injury.
Squeezing paddle, sure.
But also the orientation of my elbow as I laid on my back, my computer on my chest for too many hours: the hunched-over curl of a crone despite my then-13 years old.
I hunched today as I did then.
Now I pay.
It’s odd to grow old. To scrape off one’s vigor and exchange passion for comfort. To realize my mind may be and continue to be heading farther away from me, not nearer.
To replace exuberance with action.
Having finished most of the big explore, to replace it with exploit.
Enjoying everyday enough to select it among the infinite.
To have experienced enough to know.
How many have made pilgrimage to Seoul for the finals of your favorite childhood sport?
Ran shirtless in Indonesia?
Meditated in Thailand?
How many have eaten pasta two blocks from the Vatican?
Kayaked the arctic ocean?
Swam the Great Barrier Reef?
Negotiated for tee shirts in Mumbai?
I don’t feel like a life unlived.
I feel like the foundation; the fundamentals of everyday existence:
That those thusfar empties are slowly seeping solid.
I don’t need to see the thousand buddhas again.
I’ve seen them, snapped selfies with silly smirks, stumbled upon the graveyard, and biked home.
Share these with a future wife and children, sure.
Invite my extended family to duck and cheese at my Paris pied-à-terre.
Learn what makes my new brothers laugh.
When the door has opened, why keep knocking?
Julian Wise 