Second Act

Upon reaching age thirty, I began to correlate this magical threshold (quite likely quite spuriously) with my recurring tendonitis, the possibility of not hitting my running goal for the calendar year, and getting headaches on rainy days.

The aged-thirty me is observably more flustered than the aged-twenty-nine me. The frequency of flares of physiological discomfort and existential doubt has increased: Who am I outside of the framework defined by my job? Do I stretch enough after runs?

Last night we watched Life In a Day on the Western States 100. It is always a treat to watch a running film the night before going on a weekend longish run. The bug to run more organized races has yet to hit me, and I have no desire to run ultras. Earlier this year, however, I had mentally formulated a glorious 30k run for my 30th birthday. I had let life get in the way of this milestone, but have conceded that there is still time to gift myself this before the next birthday hits.

I recently read The Life of Pi on my flight to Berlin. I was a first timer for both. The visit spurred me to extend daily Duolingo German lesson durations both in the hopes of one day reuniting with this lovely city and - more personally and poetically for me - reading Faust in Goethe’s original words.

Returning home to an early Canadian winter meant renewing NPR podcast-filled treadmill sessions. Day by day the evenings grow darker. Time over time the rest of the world begins to become my Richard Parker. Sail the sea, meet the storm. Hallucinative journey, unknown ends.

***

At age seventeen I wrote that I wanted to see my every single action as a flutter of the butterfly’s wing - that I wanted to be a wave in the ocean and an echo in the valley. At age twenty-seven I wrote that there is no greater joy for me than bulwarking my understanding of the world to share with fellow human beings - that information wants to be shared and I yearned to be its messenger.

I still want these things. The fiery believer exists in me still. I think - I hope.

Yet everyday I am drawn to treatises on contemporary civilization’s crash course with ecological limits, discourses on compatible political and economic models, and most recently, The Empathic Civilization, perhaps in hopes of restoring my belief in the struggle for reaching higher global consciousness and empathy.

Yet everyday the big stage seems further and further away. Solutions to complex systems require elusive amounts of social cooperation and effort. Amongst the despairing politics that drown us, how does one extract meaning from the day to day?

I’ve begun to think more seriously about pursuing projects that can add immediate value for real people, maybe a cost optimization app for small and medium businesses that rolls pro forma accounting, supply management, and inventory forecasting into one. This sounds almost as delightful as reading Feynman Lectures.

But then again, I’ve also begun to think more seriously about becoming a part-time dogwalker and grocery shopper.

“Do be do be do”