You're almost dead

I really tried to write a post about maturity. I did. But then I had a conversation with a housemate and she reminded me that we are almost dead. So damn it, be happy now, because there may be no tomorrow!

 Thanks to Andy Giordano for shooting photos. You can check out the rest of his stuff here.

Here is the original post:

Maturity

It has been a topic that I have thought about throughout my life. What is maturity?

I have always loved it when people say "Act your age!".

No matter what age I am, I am acting my age, silly.

I have been thinking about it because I don't fit my own stereotype for what a man is.

Consider this:
On Friday after school I went and hung out with 12-16 year old boys, the freeride team. We built a kicker and did back flips. It was me, a 29 year old, and a bunch of boys and young men, and we were having a great time. Apparently fun does not change as we get older.

The next day I went out with some friends and found this great cornice pictured above. No, I didn't land it any of the three times I tried, but it was fun. Are these the pursuits of a man, or a boy?

A man has responsibilities, or at least fulfills the ones he has. He has kids, he has a job that makes him unhappy, or at least he complains about. A man has troubles, and drinks to deal with it. A man fights, and gets dirty, and doesn't get to have too much fun.

This does not describe my life at all. I play almost every day. My job is super fun. I pretty much live in a way that is as close to camping as I can get. I don't have any kids. I don't have a partner. It is unclear to me that any of those things will happen.

The identities that we form now are drastically different than what the past has given us as options. How many generations have really had the choice to have kids? How many sports have been invented in the last 50 years to keep people playing their whole lives?(think surfing, biking, climbing, whitewater kayaking). The world is changing faster than we can change our life expectations.

So here we are. Playing like we are kids, because we can. Maybe we are the new adults, not burdened by the things that our parents generations were burdened by. We have economic independence. We can wait for love to marry, we can wait to have children. We are different, and that is a hard thing to be because the rules no longer apply.