He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. ~ Plato

Last week I wrote a bit about fun and play, it’s really been on my mind lately. Aging is hell, the problem with mortality is of course, mortality. As you age, you can start to feel like you’re running out of time to do all of the things you want to do, to experience, all of the time you want to spend with the people you love. If you let yourself dwell on this, and my friends I certainly do, it can create a tremendous amount of pressure as you ask yourself, am I making the best use of my limited time?

The problem with pressure, is sometimes, instead of pushing you harder to do more, it can become overwhelming and cause you to freeze. I’m someone who has always taken pride in the fact that I’m really good under pressure. From being good on exams as a student, to playing well in important games as an athlete or handling home life responsibilities at a way too young age, I’ve always been good under pressure. And I’ve been tested in other ways as well, I’ve had knives and guns pulled on me, been shot at twice and I was able to function incredibly well in those circumstance. I’ve also handled some medical emergencies in my time as a resident assistant.

Life has certainly thrown me a set of challenges, at one point I was an alcoholic and an addict, I’ve attempted suicide and suffered through years of deep depression, but I’ve fought through all of it. In fact, at this point in my life things are pretty good, there are no monumental problems to overcome, well except mortality and no one has pulled that one as far as we know.

Through the pandemic I fell into a state of languishing, I was really excited to find out there was a term for it. And honestly it took until about six months ago before I really had fully come out of that state of mind. However lately, even though I’ve been back to my normal, multi-tasking productive self, something has not been quite right. I’ve felt under incredible pressure and I think I finally figured it out. As I discussed in the first paragraph, I’m feeling the pressure of mortality at a level that has kind of locked me up and it’s coming from me. The answer is fun and play.

I am someone who tends toward being solitary, and while that’s a comfortable state for me, human’s are social animals. The pandemic, the structure of my job, and my natural proclivity has led to me being a bit more socially isolated than I should be, and this has led to me having less fun. I’ve unfortunately stopped doing the things that bring me joy and that has to change, I’ve gotten locked into this idea that I need to be more productive, to use every minute better.

So what am I going to do about this? First, I have to take the pressure off, stop worrying about being productive every weekend. This weekend was a start, I allowed myself to skip a couple of workouts, I ate a few meals that I shouldn’t and I kicked back and watched some pre-season football and finally, a couple of good movies that were films I knew would fully encompass my mind so that I could be solely focused on the film. I’m pushing for less multi-tasking and distraction, more mindfulness. And overall, just to enjoy myself more, so this means more photography, more time at the ocean, more walking tours in San Francisco, more travel and anyone who knows me well knows, more pizza.

So my friends, we need to be productive, we need to focus on what and who is important in our lives. But we need to be childlike and have fun, it all leads to happier days my friends. ~ Rev Kane