“The Good Ol’ Days”

The Weekly Read #4, “The Good Ol’ Days”

Time passes, birds sing, and water falls.  We all know these things and especially know not to chase the last one. This week I have been doing a lot of thinking, but more importantly: a lot of living.  

We moved into a new house across town on August 1st and the next day my baby brother flew out to start a 9 day vacation with me.  Since he arrived, life has been a whirlwind.  Surviving off Starbucks Frappuccinos and homemade Chicken Alfredo, we have been running around all of Los Angeles.  I feel like I am usually all over town, but my little brother is the adventure type as much as I.  By the way, his name is Jameson.  Named after the whiskey.  Together we have been going on daily runs, trying restaurants around the city, making clothes at the studio, digging holes in the sand at the beach, and wrestling in our new front room.  

Jameson and I’s favorite thing to do is wrestle.  If you know what I look like, you know I have a rather lanky, skeleton looking, slenderman figure.  But you may not know that I have been consistently going to the gym since I was 14, so I have built a solid amount of strength and muscle underneath my baggy clothes. My little brother has a much different body type.  He is 14 years old right now (10 years younger than I) and stands confidently around 5 feet and 10 inches, weighing about 240 pounds.  I am roughly 6’3 and gravitate around 180 pounds.  This combination makes for very fun wrestling bouts between the two of us.  I always win, but I’m not sure anymore if these last few years have been because of his mercy.  I think he gives me about 60% effort when I’m at about 95%.

Within the next four days of his stay, we plan on catching a Dodgers game, hitting Six Flags, a few more beach days, and much more wrestling.  We look forward to it all.  In fact, all of this forward-looking made me realize something.  I am in “The Good Ol’ Days”. It was a realization that immediately gave me a sense of peace and happiness, but then was followed by a wave of anxiety.  I was happy because I felt that it was exciting to notice the fact I was in such an amazing time of my life: healthy, in my early 20’s, living in Los Angeles with some of my best friends, and making art for a living.  What a beautiful and extremely lucky position to be in! But then that made me worry.  I started to wonder if this was the peak of my life.  I worried that if I accepted this period to be MY  “The Good Ol’ Days” then I would be signing myself up for a future of despair following this year.  In other words, if I let this year be the climax, then the rest of my life would just be a slightly declining plateau.  

Despite that worry, I decided to accept this as my “The Good Ol’ Days” and that started a shift in my perspective to a place of loving gratitude.  (If this period was the climax, maybe this is some of that post-nut clarity?) This acceptance allowed me to see life through a lens where I wanted to make the absolute most of my “The Good Ol’ Days”. My thought process is: “If these are going to be the best days of my life, I am most certainly not going to let them be spent in worry, anxiety, anger, or regret.  I must make the most of every moment.”  And that circuit of thoughts has been a game-changer.  And it brought me to another realization.

Amidst this goal of making the most of my “The Good Ol’ Days” I think it was an underlying feeling of anxiety propelling me to strive for excellence in my department of personal happiness.  I still had that same worry that even if these were the best days EVER, I didn’t want the rest of my life to be the aftermath of it all.  And so I decided they weren’t going to be.  I realized that the rest of my life can be my “The Good Ol’ Days”.  They never have to be some group of moments in the rear view window of my life.   I can choose to let them be here everyday now and everyday ahead of me!  

So that is what I am choosing.  I am going to make sure to never let my past be better than my present.  Because it always comes back to perspective.  I want to choose to see my life as better when I’m a saggy 70 year old man than it is now.  I want to let my 20’s be better than my teens and my 30’s be better than these years.  And so on and so forth.  It has been a delightful realization and decision.  I will try to not forget it. 

I want to thank you if you have read this far and I hope your week so far has been full of good times.  We are halfway through. Remember to make the most of every day and please, remember to:

Read a Book.