Is this a mid-life crisis?

    My question today is; when can we stop trying?

                I’m 40 now, is that an appropriate age to stop, relax and smell the flowers?  Or is it 50…60?  Do I need to keep striving to be something better until I retire?  Isn’t that sort of too late?  If we’re pushing hard to be better at work, to podium at every race we enter, and being the best husband/father ever, where do we rest and enjoy the life we have right now?  Are we moving too fast to enjoy the here and the now?  Will the people who are constantly trying to get to that CEO position or Supervisor position end up at 65 looking back on what they’ve missed?  I don’t want that.  Since I graduated High School I’ve been striving to be better.  Better at what I’m still a little unclear about but I know I wanted to be better.  With this new promotion chances are this is as ‘better’ as I’m going to get.  So if being ‘better’ has been my motivator than what is it going to be now?  I’m facing twenty to twenty-five years of work still in front of me.  I’ve promoted for what could, in all honesty, be the last time.  Above me degrees are required, experience is required, and skills….skills I don’t generally possess…are required.  My mother went out and got an education and a career in her 40’s and I applaud her for it but is that still a realistic option.  I looked at signing up for school to take some IT courses and bone up on my limited but ok tech skills.  I couldn’t get in and it would’ve cost me nearly $300 for one class if I did.  (after books)  So is the question one of passion?  Do I simply lack the passion to move forward.

 

                It dawns on me that it might come off as sounding a bit whiny.  I thought about deleting it and starting over.  It’s been my policy to not post complaints and tirades about life but these questions; this concern is real to me.   Work is good, the four week old promotion has been awesome and yet I’m left wondering if it will be enough.  Yoda accuses Luke of looking, ‘to the future, to the past, never his mind on where he’s at, what he is doing’  (I paraphrased a bit).  Am I un-trainable?  Will I bring balance to the Force?  Ok, Ok I’m probably trainable but I doubt I’ll bring balance to the force.  Seriously though, will this promotion bring enough challenge and enough opportunity to learn and stretch that desire to be ‘better’ will fade over time or to get me into my retirement years?  At what point is a dog old enough to stop learning new tricks?  Is that the point where we retire?  My Dad retired because he was tired of the politics not because he hated the core work he was doing.  I hate the politics of work now (does this mean I get to retire?) but what job doesn’t have them and honestly who actually thrives on them?  I love the core work responsibilities I’m being given (even when the load of it has quadrupled since I was promoted) will that be enough to keep me going or as I age and lose a step will it be too much? 

                It seems this post is one of questions, the unknown and the unknowable.  It’s kind of a cool thing to not have the answers, to not have a clear and concise path laid out in front of you but it’s also a scary place to be.  Walking the knifes edge of sanity is an awesome exhilarating experience yet the danger always exists, the possibility of falling into the warm embrace of insanity is always hovering over you and it’s a long walk I have waiting for me with lots of opportunities to fall.  I have no answers fellow reader, do you?  How do you my fellow forty-something year olds deal with this weird ‘not-quite-mid-life’ place we find ourselves?  Are you happy?  Do you face the same ‘fears’ and uncertainty?  I’d love to hear from you.

For the children...

               Recently it seems that the state of California is determined to shut down seventy-one of our state parks in an effort to stem their hemorrhaging money loss.  I could go into all of the politics behind it but in all honesty I’m not a political guy.  I’m just a guy who grew up going to some of these parks and has found myself working in the industry.   One of the parks closing down was the site of my very first camping trip with my family way back when I was around seven.  I’ve been to a few of these others but really why are we denying our future generations the opportunity to see these parks?  Why are the parks the thing to suffer here? 

                The parks systems of the states, local counties and cities are the backbone of our history and it blows me away that a state can simply close the doors and walk away.  The parks allow the future generations to experience things that are quickly being gobbled up by the fast food mentality, video games, Wikipedia, and apathy.  If we close these opportunities off to a generation that only got to get its collective toes wet by seeing images on their latest Wikipedia search there will come a time when no one in a given generation will ever set foot in a park. 

                The invention of GPS has already made the map reading skills I learned as a child obsolete.  Kids nowadays wouldn’t be able to find their way out of a paper bag without their GPS.  Parks give girls and boys the opportunity to learn about some of these ‘ancient’ ways.  Parks allow them to touch and see and experience history.  Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.  Parks give a family the opportunity to come together and for a few hours, a day or longer be together. 

                “Alice algae and Freddy fungi took a liching to each other and now their relationship is on the rocks”

                Funny right?  I learned this from a park ranger at a park when I was around 10.  I have never forgotten it.  Why would we look to deprive our children on this sort of education?   I’ve used the saying in my Environmental Science class midterm essay.  I’ve used it to teach my own children and at least a few other times while working.  Seriously though how do we expect our kids to keep from paving over the entire continent if we don’t instill in them a love/appreciation of the outdoors?

                This love doesn’t have to be developed through nights out camping or even a hike.  The municipal park is just as important as the big national forests or state parks.  Locally, our municipal parks have been shut down due to funding.  Kids can’t even go to a park to play.  That is simply insane and wrong on so many levels I find myself speechless.   Have the politicians forgotten what it was like to be a child and go to the park with the family to enjoy a picnic, a romp through the playgrounds, or rolling around the grass? 

                In my work world I experience some really baffling behavior towards parks and while at times it can be exasperating I also see it as an opportunity to educate the public on what being a User of the park system entails and the responsibility they have to keep it clean and ready for the next User to come along.  I think that this is probably the most important aspect of my job and the jobs of everyone who works in the Parks, Recreation, or open space field.  Education.  We need to educate those who are to follow us.  Whether this is done through the parents or in our individual interactions with the children as they run through our parks is not the concern, the education is the important part.  I recently spoke to an individual who drove onto the grass at a park.  At first I was angry because I know how much work goes into the maintenance of that grass.  I spoke to driver of the car and treated them with respect while I explained why driving on the grass was not a good idea.  The driver hadn’t realized and was respectful and apologetic when he left.  My cynicism hasn’t quite grown to the point that I think he’ll just ignore me and do it again.  I feel like I got through to him and hopefully he’ll pass his education on to a friend or two and to his kids. 

                If we want to keep the Parks and Open Spaces of our cities, counties, and states open to the public and available to future generations we must make sure that the future generation understand what it means, enjoys it and wants to bring their children to the park.  That means we ALL must work together to keep them open.  Get involved on a local level, pick up bits of trash you might see lying along the path you’re walking on, find out if there are trail building days, participate, participate, participate.  Only by doing this and bringing your kids along will we be able to continue to enjoy the outdoors for generations to come.