Before we go any further, I need to promise you something.
I am NOT going to give you 73 lessons I’ve learned in 73 years.
🤮
You’re welcome.
When I was about four years old, I decided the dog’s breakfast looked pretty good. So I got down on all fours, stuck my face in his bowl and joined him.
The dog apparently had not been consulted about this arrangement.
He bit me on the chin.
In retrospect, perhaps that should have been Lesson #1. I have no idea what the other 72 would be.
I’ve been a few different guys since then
For a good chunk of my life, I surfed. I loved it.
I had great friends in that world. Some were world-class surfers. I knew guys who surfed waves considerably bigger than anything I had an interest in paddling into.
I ran too. And for a while Peggy and I got pretty serious about weight training. Serious enough that around 2000 we entered one of those fitness magazine body-transformation contests.
Peggy won her category. I came in second in mine.
There were bikinis.
There were Speedos.
We will move on at this point. 😂
I loved the leg press in those days. I was lean, not one of the big muscle guys in the gym, but I could push a surprising amount of weight.
I remember some of those big guys watching as I kept adding plates.
They’d look at me.
Look at the machine.
Shake their heads.
Then I’d knock out ten.
I enjoyed that more than I probably should have.
That guy felt strong. He surfed. He ran. He lifted weights.
And he had absolutely no idea what was coming.
Neither did the next guy
By 2007, my body was a mess.
This is one of those parts of my story that I’ve told enough times that it can almost sound inevitable now.
I was broken. Then I found yoga and resistance stretching. Then Peggy and I learned more. Then we started helping other people. Then RiversZen happened.
Nice story.
Except that’s not what it felt like while I was living it.
There was no RiversZen waiting for me that I could see. There was no grand plan.
I was facing a pile of surgeries. I’d been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Things hurt. My body wasn’t working the way I wanted it to work.
I wasn’t thinking:
This is wonderful. Obviously this will eventually lead to me teaching Qigong.
I was trying to figure out what the hell to do.
One thing led to another. I tried yoga. I found resistance stretching.
Peggy and I learned together. We traveled to Miami for training. We experimented. We practiced. We worked on each other. We started working with other people.
Some things helped. Some didn’t.
We kept going.
Eventually we opened RiversZen. And somehow the guy who had once stuck his face in a dog bowl was teaching people how to take care of their bodies.
Nobody saw that coming.
Least of all me.
I don’t miss every guy I used to be
This is something I’ve been thinking about lately.
I don’t surf anymore. And I’m really okay with that.
I loved surfing. I wouldn’t trade that part of my life for anything. But I don’t sit around wishing I could go back and be that guy again.
Same with a lot of things.
There have been chapters of my life that were wonderful.
They ended.
That doesn’t make them less wonderful.
And I don’t think the goal of getting older is to desperately hang onto every previous version of yourself. Sometimes I think we’re sold that idea.
Keep doing everything you did at 30. Don’t give anything up. Prove you’ve still got it.
Why?
I’ve already been that guy. I liked him.
I’m pretty fond of this guy too.
This guy is still changing
A few days ago I was teaching Qigong Move & Stretch. I’d changed the class again.
Some of the stretching we’d traditionally done standing had never felt quite right to me, so I went back to an earlier idea of beginning seated, getting grounded and opening the body before we stood for the Qigong flow.
And while I was teaching, I said something that I didn’t think much about at the time:
“It’ll never be done.”
I was talking about the class.
But maybe I wasn’t.
Peggy and I have spent years learning things, trying things, keeping what helps and changing what doesn’t. I still do it.
I change my mind. I try something. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes Peggy tells me I’m wrong.
Occasionally I even listen.
I’ve become a little more peaceful over the years. Maybe a little more relaxed.
Not too relaxed.
I can still get irritated by somebody doing 52 in the left lane.
There are standards.
But I’m not trying very hard to become the guy I used to be.
I’m interested in finding out who this guy becomes next.
None of them knew
That’s what strikes me when I look backward today.
Four-year-old Dave had no idea.
Surfer Dave had no idea.
The guy in the Speedo certainly had no idea.
The guy sitting there in 2007 wondering what to do about a body that wasn’t working very well had no idea. Even the guy who opened RiversZen didn’t know what RiversZen would become.
They could only see the life directly in front of them.
Same as me.
That’s oddly comforting.
Because birthdays naturally make us look backward. Another year. Another number. Another reminder of how much life is behind us.
But I don’t feel like I’m standing at the end of something.
I’m teaching classes I love. I’m walking as far as I want. Peggy and I are still building things together.
I’m still learning. Still experimenting. Still changing things that don’t make sense to me anymore.
Still finding things that make me laugh. Still occasionally doing something stupid, although I haven’t eaten out of a dog bowl in quite some time.
Progress.
And I’m still curious.
Maybe that’s the part I appreciate most.
So yes, I’m 73
There.
I said it.
And after spending the last year mentioning my age in approximately every third article, I’m going to try very hard to shut up about it now.
😂
I don’t have 73 lessons for you. I don’t have a blueprint for the rest of my life either.
I don’t know what’s coming. I don’t know what I’ll discover. I don’t know what I’ll change my mind about.
I don’t even know who the next Dave is.
None of the other guys did either.
And looking back from here, that has turned out to be one of the best parts.