Is Your Life Age Appropriate?
There’s obviously nothing wrong with having a youthful disposition but there’s a time in any man’s life when he is called upon to be age-appropriate ranging from his decisions, dress sense and diet. It begs the question, are you age-appropriate?
As a dashing young man about town, you’ve probably had a few wild nights where you met up with the guys, sloshed yourselves silly and woke up in your bed after falling asleep in your jeans. Personally I can and can’t remember some nights in Hong Kong, Lusaka, Joburg …
But for every man, the Airbus of his youth eventually taxis out of runway and must take off for a lifetime living as a grown up.
It becomes age-appropriate to no longer drink yourself into a stupor when you’re the head of a household where your family looks to you for protection and sobriety in the event of an emergency drive to the hospital or break in.
Where you could easily walk into an empty bachelor pad and sleep is now a house with a family. Or an elderly parent who is relying on you to be back early enough to help them take their medicine.
Certain behaviours simply fall off as the years advance. With a family, you can no longer move around the city in your red, two door sports car as the only car in your garage.
A rational, spacious vehicle that can carry your family, in laws and a bag of mealie meal becomes your reality.
Sure, you can have your sports car but probably as something you still enjoy driving in your own time but showing up to pick your newborn child, the mother and her mother in a sleek two door BMW exposes a glaring lack of discernment.
In the same way we try to extend the years of our youth, some men take on too much too soon.
Long before he has built a solid foundation for himself, the modern man is already neck deep with children he must buy diapers for, clothe and educate, borrowing for consumption and working in a job he hates because he desperately needs the money.
Yes, life is not linear with a timeline for success or failure, at that. But there is something about pacing yourself in life. By your mid thirties, you’re already picking understated sneakers to go with your jeans on casual Friday.
You’re watching your drinks when your body takes longer to recover from Sunday evening drinks at the bar.
You simply become age-appropriate.
The single or married friends who keep you out late in the night while your family waits on you are re-evaluated. Even the volume level in your car drops down a notch. You respond more than you react to setbacks or success.
The reality is that the jeans naturally get wider, cars slower and decisions less selfish as we age.
