“Forever young, I want to be forever young.”
– Alphaville
It was a bright summer day. Birds were chirping, children were playing in the street, and I was thinking about the end of the world. Or, more specifically, the end of a world.
I was contemplating how much a man losses as he ages.
My current position in life is pretty awesome. I can bulk up in no time if I take weightlifting seriously. Going to party means I’ll be surrounded by attractive girls in their late teens and early twenties. I don’t have a wife or kids, so all my money is my own. Likewise, none of my friends are married so they’re always free to hang out. I can do anything I want whenever I want.
Unfortunately that will change. It will eventually get harder for me to put on muscle. I’ll become too old to attend college parties. Although I never intend on getting married and having a family, most of my friends do. As such, we’ll eventually drift apart as they “man up” and spend their time doing yard work.
While thinking about aging and decline, I started to think more about what it actually means to be a man. I wish I could write about some kind of brilliant observation that I had, but I can’t. During the entire time that I contemplated the true nature of manhood, my ideas and opinions continued to shift. I’d think up fifteen reasons why a guy should dedicate his life to personal ambitions, only to construct an equally valid argument against it.
After several hours of critical thinking, I eventually settled on a basic foundation upon which I consider all masculinity is based: the desire to have done something.
Whether it means raising a family or traveling the world and building a personal empire, all men want to look back from their deathbeds and believe that they’ve made an impact in their world.