How To Feel Better About Getting Older And Confront The Fear Of The Unknown

0:20 Hey, what's up? Thanks so much for taking a few minutes to hang out with us here. And by us, I mean me because Zach is off today. And I just wanted to share something with you that I've been struggling with lately. Maybe it sounds like something that you've gone through recently or dealing with yourself. And so I thought, you know, together sort of working this out in real time, that we could lean on each other, share this this pain together. And maybe by the end of my rambling here for the next few minutes, we'll come to some sort of a solution or resolution. to deal with this problem. And the thing that I've been dealing with, the thing that I'm having the hardest time with right now is... Not so much my mortality, but just getting older. And I say that as a 47 year old guy in 2024, right?

1:01 Like live longer than ever for the most part. I mean, we have, I have a long life ahead of me, but my body seems to want to constantly remind me that I'm getting older. My eyesight wants to remind me, my ears, my pain in my knees, the frequent visits to the doctor. They're all reminding me of how much older I'm getting and how quickly it's coming. And I think, you know, when I look back, I think it started a few weeks ago when I was in the gym, I was doing what I normally do, throwing heavy stuff around by myself because I go to this gym where there's never anybody there, which is pretty amazing. I'm going to be honest, but I'm sitting there, I'm lifting stuff and I look in the mirror and for whatever reason, man, the face I saw in that mirror showed me all 47 years of the life that I've lived.

1:46 I just felt, I just felt it, man. Like in my bones, I felt old and part of it might've been, you know, I'm sitting there doing this and I'm fairly new to a regular gym routine, right? So I'm like, the weights aren't huge. I'm not super impressed with what I'm doing. But, you know, it's it's growing. It's getting better day by day. But while I'm doing it, the playlist that's on in my head is, you know, the fucking super hits of the 90s, which was, you know, my my youth, my teenage years, my early 20s. When I was a much younger, you know, a much younger man just just felt better in my body. in some ways, but you know, I guess psychologically and others, if I'm being honest, but but from a health perspective, I you know, I did, I just felt younger.

2:28 And I look back on it now with with some grief with first with some grief for that time being gone, and not being able to do it again, right, not be able to relive it. But it's not like, you know, those were the good old days, man, like, those were the times it's really just more like, I'm kind of sad that I only got to do it once, right? I only got to do this first half of my life once I won't get to do it again. It's, it's like when you when you lose a friend when you lose a loved one, and you just wish you could get a little bit more time with them or do one more thing with them or just have one more experience like, I don't know, it's a weird thing to put into words, but it's It is a form of grief, I think it's it's feeling a loss of who I once was.

3:10 And don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade who I was for who I am now. I'm a much healthier, better version of me now than I was then. But it's just kind of this reminder of the impermanence of all of this and how how short this trip really is. And if that's not enough, you know, I'm looking at my daughter's getting older, I've got a teenager now who's in full on teenager mode, which sometimes is great. And sometimes fucking pisses me off. But in all the ways that it appropriately should, I think, right. My eight year old is getting more independent, her vocabulary is growing, her sense of humor is getting really dialed in. So that relationship that I have with her is getting more sophisticated. Which again, is great.

3:51 It's awesome. I'm very happy about that. But I'm also sad for the little baby, the little girl who day by day drifts farther and farther into my past. And I already mentioned, you know, the body shutting down today, I was at the eye doctor, doing all the tests, looking at all the different letters, trying to pick them out, which ones are blurry, which ones are clear. And it's just, you know, that's a reminder of time just slipping away. And I'm doing it with a bad knee and a bad foot and a bad back, like all these age related problems that I didn't have, I don't think as much in my 20s. Maybe I glorify it. Maybe maybe I'm glorifying my youth and maybe I was in constant pain then to Certainly emotional pain, but maybe not as much physical pain as I think I deal with now.

4:37 But again, just reminders of the impermanence of this experience. And it's not like I'm worried about death. It's not some morbid fear of my mortality. In a lot of ways, I'm kind of OK with it. It's something I've never experienced, something you've never experienced. So it's scary. Who knows what happens? Who knows what that's going to feel like? It scares me, I think, in all the normal ways that it scares anybody. But I think the thing that bothers me about it is the not knowing. the not knowing of what part of this continues, if it does, right? I mean, there are those that believe that you do sort of maintain some sense of who you were here.

5:20 And what bothers me about it is... how when it ends, it's the end of my family's story. Like, I think sometimes about the whole past life idea. Like, what if we do live other lives? What if we go on to something else? What if this is just the latest in a series of lives I've lived in some form or another? What if I've had other families, other kids, other pets, other experiences, and I don't remember any of them? How fucking sad is that? Like, if that happens with this, right? If I, if I, go on to whatever happens after this, if there is an after this, and I don't get to bring any memory of what this experience was with my kids, with my wife, all this stuff that I've spent the last 47 years doing, and however long I have left, what's it for?

6:10 Like, if you don't get to hang on to any of it, it's just, it just is really sad to me. It just really, it breaks my heart to think about not having this because I've had it for so long. And maybe it's that. I don't know. Again, I'm working this out in real time. Help me out here. So yeah, if you can't tell, I think I'm having a bit of a midlife crisis and I'm living it out here in real time for you to enjoy. I hope you're enjoying it. But look, some of this, again, these just little sort of reminders that pop up. The other night I was watching an episode of Queer Eye with my family and there was this great line with the woman who was being made over. She was an older woman with gray hair and you know, she's in the salon getting her hair done and she was adamant that they not change her hair color, her very, very gray hair color.

6:55 she said she didn't want to change her hair color because she'd lived long enough to earn it. And I thought that's that's fucking beautiful, man, to be able to hang on to that and to wear your age with pride and to know that you got to this point. And you want to celebrate it? How many people do you know that haven't had that experience like I have tons of loved ones that died much too young that would love the opportunity to grow into gray hair and grow into knee pain and back pain and all the things I'm sitting here whining to you about and They never got that chance and that's also heartbreaking So I guess where I'm landing as we work this out together is, you know, the ability to or the or the attempt I'm trying to make here to have some gratitude for the pain that I experienced for the sadness that I experienced, the grief that I'm carrying around, the questions I have about what's going to come next after all of this.

7:50 With all of that, I have to have a little bit of gratitude to be able to even have this experience because I've had plenty of people in my life that know what happens when it's all over. Unfortunately, they can't really tell me because they've already lost their lives. So I guess the piece of advice I'm trying to give myself in recording this for me to hear, for me to say out loud and hopefully for you to hear and to somehow benefit from is that if you are in any way dealing with what I'm dealing with in this weird midlife, what's it all about stuff and all the pain that comes along with it is to try to have a little bit of gratitude for having the gift that is this experience all the way through.

8:34 Now, does that put a smile on my face? Does that make me happy? Does that solve the problem? Honestly, right now, no, it doesn't. It's but yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't solve the problem. But it's something for me to work on and perhaps something for you to work on too. So that's it, that's what I've got for you this week. I'm going to go put some heat on my knee and on my foot. Probably take a little vitamin A. I know Advil's bad for you, but I'm probably gonna take it anyways, because I'm in a lot of pain. And I'm going to try to stop being mad at my kids for a minute and give them a hug because again, gratitude for the pain in the ass that they can be sometimes is the thing I need to focus on. The gratitude for the literal pain in my ass that I'm old enough to experience.

9:16 And the gratitude I need to work on having just a little bit more for the life that I have and all that I get to experience. It's all, it's all homework for me. It's all stuff that I need to work on. Maybe you need to work on it as well. So yeah, that's me shouting into the void, shouting into this microphone, hoping that you've heard it. If any of this resonated with you, I would love to hear if, if you're going through the same thing, if you're feeling the same feelings, if you've asked yourself these same questions and dealt with the same stuff and how you got through it, or maybe you're still getting through it now. You can always comment on any of our posts and social media about this episode or any other. Feel free to email us. You can always send an email to info at the fit mess .com. But reach out, we'd love to hear from you. And if not you, if you know someone who's going through this kind of thing and maybe they're lonely in that struggle.

10:01 Maybe share this episode with them. Maybe they need to hear someone else working through these feelings in real time, just like they're probably doing. You can do that by going to our website, thefitmass .com, And that's where we'll be back next week with a new episode. Thanks for sitting through my one man therapy session so that I can try and sort some of this out in my head and hopefully help you too. Thanks for listening.