#3. Your best friend is someone who does not yet exist.
I am 42 years old, and today I have lived 15 384 days (I have checked it in an app 🙂
In my country, men live an average of 79 years.
Therefore, I have 14 289 days left to live.
F*ck! It’s scary when you realize that you’ve already lived more days than you have left to live.
Every day, I have one day less.
- Tomorrow 14. 288 days
- In a month 14. 258 days
- In a year, 13. 924 days
- In ten years, I’ll have hopefully 10. 639 days left.
It feels like the countdown of a bomb that could explode at any moment if someone touches the wrong wire.
And when you internalize it, you rethink life and discover cold, hard truths like these three.
1. After forty, you are no longer a promising young [Insert here your dream profession]
After forty, you can’t keep waiting for someone to pick you.
Spoiler: no one will.
Believe it or not, many people are still waiting for that call, that opportunity, that person who one day tells them, “I’ve been watching you, and I think you’re a misunderstood genius with talent and a lot of untapped potential.”
Suppose someone says that to you, be wary. — Chances are they want to get you into a pyramid scheme.
After forty, you have to wake up one morning and choose what is left of yourself before the flame of your illusion is extinguished forever.
From age forty onwards, everything is achieved through decision and work. And you realize it because your metabolism slows down, and it takes you three times as long to lose weight.
And that reality applies to the rest of areas of your life,
- If you want a partner, you will have to work hard.
- If you want to make money, you will have to work hard.
- If you want to be healthy, you must take care of yourself.
Everything that in your youth seemed to rain down from heaven after forty doesn’t happen if you don’t make an effort.
You must be careful because many people exploit your magical thinking to make you believe in their miraculous recipes and use your desperation to get money.
Lesson: there are no shortcuts. Be wary of anyone who wants to exploit your laziness or your desire to succeed quickly.
2. Either you take over, or the thing you love may cease to exist.
After 40, you have no excuse.
It’s up to you to take over those things you love, and if you don’t, they will surely die out.
From a certain age, you have to stop looking for mentors and become a role model for others.
And not out of vanity or a desire for prominence: it’s up to you to take over from the people you admire.
It is up to you to be that writer, that entrepreneur, that exemplary father, that [Insert here the profession of the people you admire most] who inspires others.
Because, indeed, all those people you admired are dead or starting to die. And if you want something not to be forgotten, persist, and evolve, you must help.
That’s why I write. Because Nora Ephron, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Cormac McCarthy, or Charles Bukowski are dead and they are not going to write new material, but above all, they cannot contemporize it and write stories that include things and use the means that exist now, like smartphones and the internet.
I write, too, to do articles talking about them so that people remember them so that they can approach their work and drink from their light, as I did.
I write so that the damned AIs do not replace us writers 🙂
You can’t eternally be the student; you have to choose yourself (Point 1) and start being the teacher, even if you don’t feel up to it, especially if you don’t feel up to it, because you will only learn to swim when you dive into the pool.
And for that, you have to forget about shame, complexes, and what people will say, start to believe it, and give the best of yourself, whatever you have, whether much or little, because it is what it is.
You don’t have to be the Michael Jordan of your sector; you have to inspire the necessary number of people so that someone else becomes Michael Jordan and people don’t forget to play basketball.
That’s what being an adult is all about choosing a role in this world and living up to it or at least dying trying so that the tradition from which you drank and which gave you reasons to endure the horrors that being alive brings with it will continue to be worthwhile for those who are like you.
Lesson: it is up to you to stop being a walker and become the one who paves the way for others to walk.
3. Your best friend is someone who does not yet exist.
If you are in your forties and intelligent, you have a new best friend: you of 20 years from now.
The biggest mistake of my life is to have been the worst enemy my current self could have.
- I neglected my health.
- I should have paid more attention to my nutrition.
- I neglected my social relationships.
- I neglected my education.
And a long list of things I regret. But I learned my lesson. And today, I work daily to honor the person I will be 20 years from now.
Because the person you’re going to become needs you today more than you can imagine. Reread it.
If you’re selfish and live like you did in your 20s burning your ships, you’re going to end up screwed in your 60s.
And if you haven’t taken care of yourself, you will have to live with an infinitely worse quality of life than you could have.
If I could be 20 years old again, I would do everything necessary to be the right hand of the person I am today (I certainly wouldn’t have heartburn every time I eat fatty foods).
Lesson: stop being your biggest enemy, and do it for the person you will be 20 years from now; that person needs you a lot more than you think.
A virtual hug
AG
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