Life Comes At You Fast
Seems like yesterday I was in my early twenties and my world was preoccupied with trying to determine where I could find a good game of pickup basketball or which promoter friend would help me get into the hottest clubs in the Meatpacking District or how many pregame shots of Bacardi 151 it took to get me sufficiently buzzed enough to keep my bar tab low for the night or how I could invite that cute group of girls out to party with me or which new lounge was opening up that I could take a date to. My BlackBerry was buzzing with excitement. There seemed to be so much room for error because the consequences of these decisions didn’t have far-reaching impacts.
Fast forward to my early thirties and my world is preoccupied with trying to stay fit without tearing my Achilles tendon for the third time or trying to determine who in my professional network will mentor me to make the right career decisions or which new bottle of wine could I share with one of my friends next time they come over my apartment because clubs are out of the question or facing the reality of really wanting to build a lifelong partnership with someone you love or if you’ll ever have the opportunity to get married and do “the work” with someone at all or what ingredients do you have to buy to try that new recipe you were inspired by on Chef’s Table. Compared to my twenties, my iPhone is silent as I continue to mute all of the various group texts that I am in so my phone doesn't buzz. The consequences of decisions today have some rather weighty impacts; every decision seems so significant.
Had you asked the former version of Neville I described if he would become the latter version of Neville I described he would have chuckled and said that won’t happen until I was in my early to mid-forties. My shortsighted master plan was to enjoy as much "freedom" for as long as I could but I didn’t factor in the possibility that my desires would shift. But over the last 18 months, I’ve been wrestling with the reality that things were changing inside of me and I was growing into a more mature adult. The things that used to satisfy my desires had begun to melt away and it seemed that certain opportunities had passed me by. The activities that I used to enjoy so much had become mundane, unfulfilling, lonely, and I began to yearn for something different...
...you see, life comes at you fast.
If Facebook is an indicator, then a large majority of my peers arrived at this place in life long before I did. My timeline is filled with dating couples, memes, engagement announcements, social injustice articles, wedding photos, fake news, newborn babies, GIFs, kids birthdays, flower crown selfies, married couples going out for a date night, more memes, older folks tinkering with modern technology, and reminders of photos from years past. Often pondering from the sidelines, I can’t help but wonder that I really shit the bed on this “growing up” process and didn’t properly set myself up for love and happiness at this age. Maybe I was so self-absorbed in my own brokenness and in pursuit of fun to ease those wounds that I had turned a blind eye to the social tectonic shifts that were happening before my eyes but...
...you see, life comes at you fast.
Recently, I was getting ready for a meeting and I applied eye cream followed by a hydrating serum, brushed down the gray hairs in my beard, then I got dressed and put on a “big boy” timepiece, followed by my suit jacket, then I text my parking garage to pull up my car, grabbed my briefcase, and as I was making one last check in the mirror before I left my apartment, I paused at the reflection of myself and said aloud, “Oh shit, I'm really an adult!” Just like that, I had come to the realization that the carefree attitude of my youth no longer had a place in my life. I drove in silence, certain that my life needed to accurately reflect what I was feeling inside. The yearning for something different was so strong and felt so right, that I knew I was "done" with that former lifestyle. I knew that I had some changes to make in my life and how I portrayed myself socially and interacted with people. Folks that love me had warned me that this day would come but I thought I was impermeable to these feelings but...
...you see, life comes at you fast.
Months later, I flew to Memphis to meet my niece who was just a few days old (there is now a baby in my life!). Then the following two weekends, I attended love filled wedding ceremonies alone which intensified already intense feelings for a long-time former love (dancing alone at weddings is the worst). Followed by a weekend with my best friend where we spent a summer night talking while drinking a bottle of tequila in the garden of my apartment building while playing music from our phones (who needs clubs/bars when you have alcohol, music, and great company at home?) and the next day taking a trip out to Long Island with him to have lunch by the water while discussing one day buying property outside of New York with a lady friend and exploring the idea of owning a boat one day so we can drink with our wives on the water (real old man "cloth talk"). These conversations were a far cry from the drunken wild weekends of our youth but...
...you see, life comes at you fast.
One moment you're in the club, with not a care in the world, drinking from a celebrities bottle service, taking photos with beautiful people you just met and the next moment you're alone at home on your couch, with holes in your shorts, unfollowing 650 accounts on Instagram, wondering how the adult joys of life seemingly passed you by so quickly. Maturing at any age can be a grueling yet rewarding process. It’s riddled with many painful moments but as my mom reminded me recently sometimes things need to be torn down to the ground to be rebuilt again. I’ve sure torn down a lot of my past ideologies to the ground and am putting the finishing touches on rebuilding new ideologies. I imagine that this tearing down and rebuilding process will happen many more times in my lifetime but hopefully with less pain. I hope that this process continues to lead me to grow emotionally, mentally, spiritually and that my experiences will lead me to be better prepared for the next social tectonic shift. After all, I did finally surrender to being a mature adult because well, life comes at you fast. However, you have to be ready to embrace the tempo. And now, I'm ready.
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