It’s hard to admit, but we’re all getting older. You got older reading this sentence. I got even older while writing it because I made a few typos, overthought how I’d start it, got stuck right here, then decided to move on.
I remember one of the first times I started to feel older. About six years ago, my wife Alicia decided that she was going to start eating a plant-based diet. I didn’t want to. In my mind, I felt like I had recently made a lot of changes and I didn’t feel like giving anything else up. I’d given up bad eating habits to lose weight, I picked up regular exercise, we started purging our home to start living a more minimalistic life, and we made a conscious effort be more responsible consumers and waste less.
All of these changes were positive. I felt better, looked better, our home was more pleasant, and we weren’t throwing away money by wasting food, excessively buying toys for our kids, or lighting money on fire getting stuff from Amazon just because happiness was merely a click away (it says so on the box).
But when faced with the idea of giving up meat, I wasn’t against it because I even liked meat. I felt as if I had learned enough, been challenged enough, thought enough, and even quite literally, watched at least 15 minutes of the Jennifer Lopez psychological thriller Enough.
The primary reason I didn’t want to change is because I was getting older.
Physically getting older is something you can feel. It’s tangible. There are bumps and bruises you can point to, like a decidedly unfun version of the Chasing Amy battle scars scene, a pop culture reference that only further highlights my aforementioned age.
Mentally getting older is a slow burn, almost invisible. The world around you changes and you definitely don’t stay the same age. Hope and optimism get replaced with snark and cynicism. You feel control slipping away. You tell yourself that you are what you are, your personal quirks become etched in stone, you start using the wrong version of your/you’re, and one day you’ve totally become some version of something you said you’d never be.
And maybe that starts to irritate you. The world you thought you knew (a made up construct colored by waves of nostalgia ) no longer exists and your you’re a stranger in a not-so-strange land, and in the worst of scenarios you start blaming others for your own shortcomings and seek out confirmation bias to support your theories about “what went wrong” with whatever flavor of cable news you prefer.
Mentally getting older, in some ways, is a fact. You just got older reading this sentence whose concept I already structurally used at the top of this post.
Mentally getting older, to some extent, is also a choice. A choice to no longer adapt to the world in real-time and instead double down on ideas and beliefs that you carry “just because you always have,” remain steadfast in preconceived notions about the way things “should be,” or put far too much value in having formed an opinion rather than taking the time to think about why you have formed that opinion. There’s comfort in being right, and complacency when you stop asking questions. And in time, both factually and choice-ic-ally (a word I just made up because I could), the mind starts to go.
When Alicia asked me if I’d join her on a plant-based journey, I was defensive. I truly didn’t want to be challenged to learn - yet another - new thing. She wanted to change. I didn’t.
And I responded by totally saying all the things that you’ve ever said when you’ve met your one Vegan friend (“How do you get your protein?”). And I said this for the same reason that most people do: To be a bit difficult and a teensy bit judgmental because it challenges your own personal beliefs and structure.
This is not a story about eating a primarily plant-based diet.
This is a story about the preciousness of the time and how I’ve learned to find joy in change and discomfort when faced with new challenges. And how I’ve learned that staying the same stunts growth, limits your world, and welcomes with open arms the proverbial walls to keep closing in on you. Changing is my way of continuing to evolve, trying to “get better,” and using my mind not to just accept what I’ve been taught or what is innately in me, but to take the time to reflect on why I am who I am and consider what I want to change about myself before life becomes a distant trail of coulda, woulda, shoulda. That power has improved my body, mind, and spirit.
This is also a story about partnership. The changes I’ve made in my life are in large part to my wife, whose boundless spirit has allowed me to take risks and make leaps of faith, in addition to the laundry list of changes that have improved our household for the better. I feel fortunate to have a partner who wants to keep growing, doesn’t keep score, and doesn’t treat marriage like how you see a husband and wife talk on insert name of CBS sitcom here. Admittedly, to make significant changes in an environment where a partnership is oppositional, filled with jealousy, or just lacks a baseline level of respect or support is perhaps near impossible.
So you got older reading this post, probably by just a few minutes. I got older by a few hours writing it. I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about changes because I keep experiencing new moments in my life that are not only new, exciting, and different, but also hard and anxiety-inducing. It would be easy to run from these changes, believe that I’ve done enough, and just accept the road ahead as is, but what fun would that be?
The uncertainty that comes with change can be scary, but to me, maintaining status quo can be a nightmare.