The Misunderstood Irony of Maturity
There is a dichotomy in how we view our own lives — we are young and do everything we can to be and stay young until some undefined moment or event that “flips the switch” and at that moment we are old. No matter how much effort you spend to keep your brain sharp, or how many body modifications through surgery or holistic remedy, or how much exercise or spiritual maintenance you put into remaining on the young side of that boundary, it inevitably flips on you regardless of if you’re onboard with the program or not. One day you’re young — the next day you’re old, end of story.
Don’t get me wrong, just because you are now old does not make you incapable of great things or original and radical thought. It also does not mean you are now no longer capable of doing amazing physical activities or feats. Similarly, being old does not make you less attractive or un-sexy — you can easily find men and women past the mid-point or even in the last trimester of their lives who are widely considered to be beautiful and sexy while not essentially capable of reproduction as defined by nature. “Old” doesn’t steal that away from people, doesn’t immediately redefine someone’s self or public image from vital and vibrant to decrepit and vestigial — but it changes your priorities in what you want out of life and what you are wanting and/or willing to invest your ever precious time and energy into.
Take a moment to think about this last statement.
Being old doesn’t steal away what you look like; doesn’t explicitly change your personality. It doesn’t immediately make you less important or less capable intellectually. Doesn’t immediately and explicitly take away any physical capabilities and skills you had before when you were labelled “young”. What does change is your approach to your priorities in life. How so? Let me provide the prime example from my own life, since it’s not at all unique that what happened to me (or anything that shakes one’s foundational belief of immortality) has that effect for everyone.
I went from being young and vital, career-focused and driven to succeed individual to a fragile and shaken mortal at age 51 years 4 months and 10 days. It wasn’t entirely as sudden as all that, my body had been hinting that it wasn’t doing well for a couple month prior to this coronary event… but I had put it off as various other things — too much sun and heat while doing yard work, a pinched nerve or pulled muscle in my upper back, etc… I was an avid gym goer — it was a habitual and fulfilling thing that I kept up even when I was on the road for work, using the hotel facilities wherever possible. I was going to the YMCA daily, doing my 30 minutes of weights and 30 minutes of cardio on the stationary bike, low medium resistance and keeping a tempo around 75–80 RPM. But the prior few months also had another oddity going on, as the heart monitor on the bike was acting odd — it would show my heart rate all the way up at 165–180 bpm when I knew that wasn’t the case. I put it off as wonky equipment — my fitbit had died the year before and so I had nothing to validate the numbers. I also didn’t feel bad at all — no symptoms of any kind of stress or over-exertion. I was slightly overweight at the time — 6' 3" tall and hovering around 230 lbs. BMI put me around 29, which is in the overweight category but even with my slim frame I have more muscle than the average man having spent my late 20’s to mid 30’s trying to add more bulk to offset my smaller frame. With how much time I devoted to keeping up my fitness, I believed I was in great shape and I could eat whatever I wanted and do things that I could do when I was 35…
Until June 22, 2015.
I signed up for the neighborhood 3x3 basketball league — the posting on Facebook talked about it being a “fun” league non-competitive and to help people meet and socialize.
What it was — all the college, HS varsity & armchair basketball stars (and holey cow there were a LOT of them — 14 teams of 5 people worth), all very competitive people and physical play much closer to football or hockey than traditional basketball.
First day of the league — 6:30 pm, and the weather was beautiful but hot. 98F and the very low relative humidity of the Pacific Northwest. I was running late from my very stressful day job, so I got home, changed into my gym stuff and went out forgetting my water bottle.
Two solid hours of round robin 3x3 physical basketball, where more often than not I was the small and lightweight guy matched up against the guy who was 20 lbs heavier than me. Steadily dehydrating throughout this time, and the last game of the evening destroyed me. I barely walked to my car to get back home and have any water and hopefully eat something as well…
Go into my home, and immediately grab at least 1 litre of water and chug it down. Three or four jumbo glasses of water with ice, and for the first time in about an hour my pores started to sweat profusely. Ate a little bit of supper, drank more water and then went upstairs to the bedroom to see my wife who was working on Nursing assignments for college, our sleeping 4 and 5 year old boys in our bed beside her and our 10 year old boy who was still awake. I carried the two young boys to their bed, the 5 year old boy on the top bunk — and that was when it started…
A terrible and profound pain started in my back, between left shoulder blade and spine that I believed was a pinched nerve. I walked back to our bedroom and told my wife, who said I should take a shower and that would loosen it up. The pain was really intense — my neck muscles were getting stiff and my left shoulder now were experiencing the pain. I asked if someone could do a quick massage just maybe to loosen something up and relieve the pinched nerve… and then I said those words that triggered a red alert:
“my pinky on my left hand is starting to go numb…”
Wife bolted up, grabbed stethoscope and blood pressure cuff and got to work. Pulse was 220 bpm, bp not measurable…
All the tv shows and movies that depict heart attacks have the victim falling down and clutching their chest. I was still walking around and coherent while my own cardiac event was happening — which is why I didn’t recognize it. It was why my wife didn’t initially jump up and check my vital signs. But we immediately got into the car and my wife drove me to the local emergency room where I walked in and told them I was having a heart attack.
By that point, the pain was subsiding — the water I drank started getting into my blood and my veins and arteries expanding again with the increasing volume of fluid. The ER people put me on a gurney and started putting tons of IVs into my arms — some didn’t readily hit a vein as even though fluids were getting into my system, my vessels were still very much collapsed to keep the blood pressure up. Initial tests of my blood found protein markers showing that I really had a heart attack — protein markers that showed some damage to heart muscle tissue happened. It was a small ER up in our neighborhood in the foothills above Seattle, so they packed me up into an ambulance and took me to the nearest cardiac center in Bellevue.
The things that go through your head during this time — how could this have happened? How bad is it? What does this mean for my future? Do I have sufficient life insurance through my employer? Will my employer provided health insurance cover this? Am I completely fucked financially as a result of lack of coverage? What if my highly competitive work environment with people who are generally 10–15 years younger than me find out about this?
I was very fortunate — very very minimal damage to my heart. Angiogram in the cardiac center uncovered two blockages — one 70% the other 50% that could be managed with medication and exercise. I had my wife bring my work laptop into the hospital where I was kept for 4 days of observation — the other lucky thing was that our group was being moved to another building the next three days so everyone was working remotely. But I was outed in one of the meetings that I had to run when someone overheard the heart monitoring beeping in the background. Company HR contacted me and asked if I needed to go on a leave of absence or short term disability — there was no way I could let this affect my career since the perception of being “old” would instantly mean my career path would be short and non-existent so I insisted I would be back at work the following Monday without any impact. But it was too late for me as now it was common knowledge…
“Old” means you don’t advance in the company. Especially in this company where “Bias for Action” and “Customer Obsession” were mantras. My wife told me I was overanxious, that no one would hold it against me — yet coming back to work I encountered a difference in how I was being treated. I also need to confess that my ego took a serious beating — two weeks after the incident I chose to climb the staircase up the 11 floors from ground level to my work area. No pain, slightly out of breath and did it without stopping — but several colleagues commented that I really need to take things easy and learn where the emergency phones were.
A few months later, to add insult to injury, the nurses discovered a flutter in the normal rhythm of my heart. The explanation of how my heart beat would seem like it’s going much faster when it was happening then brought back the incidents on the exercise bike and the heart beat monitors showing very high counts. I found out that I have a congenital issue with my heart where there are two or more “pacemakers” that keep the rhythm when there should only be one, and they were not at all in sync which could cause a lot of issues including blood clotting that could then cause a stroke or another heart attack. Cardiac ablation cryogenically eliminated those extra pacemakers and for a long while all has been ok — but just like a car which hits a certain age and then things start breaking down, that has been happening to me. Kidney stones, gall bladder infection and removal, and the most recent a nodule detected on my prostate just more highway markers that age is taking its’ toll and my “Old” tag is here to stay. I went back to the gym and kept fit, but it’s now with a great deal of nervousness and trepidation — what if I’m doing bench press and I have something happen, making me drop the 200 lbs I’m pushing up back onto my chest? Nothing is the same anymore…
The formerly very career focused and driven middle aged guy turned into a person more afraid of upsetting people and losing their job. What had been a strength was now a hindrance, as when I tried to push forward projects with purpose that people would consider to be the hallmark of a good manager — I was now the grumpy old man. I stayed in my job for another 14 months that were filled with far more stress now because of this perceived weakness, and after several of my largest and most valuable initiatives delivered and a well deserved vacation where I decided that I would give my resignation on my 2 year anniversary date… well my manager and HR decided that same exact thing. At least they waited until my anniversary so I could vest out and cash in on a good chunk of my stock — if it were anyone else other than Jeremy I think they would have gone through the effort of getting rid of me before that date so that I wouldn’t get that reward.
I’ve since gone on to work for Google, Facebook and I’m in a startup right now that has a family safety component, not just profit margin and increasing revenues. But my focus on what really matters in life is different. I’m not afraid of losing my job because I’m old — there are way too many other reasons you can lose your job that would be far more valid. My experience and a whole lot of patience with processes, letting things develop with a degree of quality is a great virtue. But when you’re career driven and working to advance sometimes the patience part is forgotten, and so becoming “old” and refocusing on not just getting there but how you get there — not “leaving a long trail of dead bodies behind you” as evidence of your passing to quote an interesting colloquialism but making sure what is behind you is a testament to your character and impact… those are the important things.