What Are You Saving Yourself For?

My birthday is Tuesday. Apparently that has me thinking about some of the lives I’ve already lived.

For a pretty good chunk of my life, I surfed.

And I don’t mean I went out a few times, bought a board and started calling myself a surfer.

Surfing was part of my life.

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.

It was a hell of a time in my life.

And I don’t surf anymore.

I’m okay with that.

Some chapters really do end

There’s a funny message we get about getting older.

Don’t give anything up.

Keep doing everything.

Prove you can still do what you did 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.

I understand the sentiment. I certainly don’t believe we should stop doing things simply because we’ve reached some particular number on the calendar.

But I don’t believe the opposite either.

I don’t have to keep surfing today to prove that the years I spent surfing mattered.

I loved that part of my life.

Then my life changed.

So did the things I wanted to do.

And somewhere along the way, surfing stopped being…