I’ve never been particularly worried about my lifespan. I’ve watched the older people, and I’m not jealous, no matter how fit they are. I’d rather live my life and die when necessary.

I do care about fitness, but not for my lifespan, or my “healthspan”, as the new trend calls it. Fitness allows me to do very hard, physical work for longer, and with more competence than an unfit person.

Good fitness also protects my ego, who doesn’t want to be left in the dust when hanging out with other people my age. I’m now working with much younger and much fitter people than me, and it does feel like a bruise on my capabilities; even at 30, I didn’t really differentiate myself from the 22 year olds out there in terms of physical performance. But at 32, I’m starting to see the difference.

That’s digression about inevitability. But fitness has only been my identity in the sense that I actively practice in the genre so I can keep up, accomplish more outdoor goals that I couldn’t do when I was younger and more sedentary, and help others learn from my mistakes and my experience.

Fitness has always gone out the window when it comes against learning and doing something new, something that speaks to me. I don’t think that’s a great habit, but it happens because when I focus on something, I put my full weight behind it, and at times that is not physical performance but self-education and reflecting on new experiences.

I’m a student of many different activities, practices, and philosophies, because none of them are me. I pick and choose and meander between them, developing my own activities, practices, and worldviews. If I boiled it down, maybe the world doesn’t offer an end for me, but only beginnings. Why be married so much to someone else’s opinions as if they are our own?

Maybe it’s same experimentation-mindset: I see a hypothesis, an assertion, set by someone else, and I’d really like it to be true, so I try it out, and see where the truth actually lies for me, and what to get rid of. Maybe I get rid of the whole thing. It’s not a waste of time, just another experience. Others seem to want it to be true, and try to make it true. Not very scientific, but people are addicted to certainty. Don’t come to me for certainty, because I only have one thing I’m certain of: I don’t know anything.

I just have opinions and experiences to draw upon, and it’s fun to make a guess and it turning out right, but it doesn’t make my thought process a rule.

Someone long ago made it a goal to live as long as possible, so now we’ve had at least 5,000 years of people trying to live this person’s goal. In the modern era, we have all this technology to see whether our bodies are trending toward this goal. With new technology comes a new addiction, and here we are, having so-called “health neuroses”, giving up living for physical health.

People want to time their death, so lifespan and healthspan have become big for online, techno-fied people. I’m aware because I’m online and techno-fied. I’m just guilty of it because sometimes I forget why I like getting swept up with the times. Sometimes it feels like a waste of time, to think so much about fitness, and how one lives a well-lived life, etc.

I think it’s because it allows me to talk about things that are relatable to people. No one relates to spiritual self-awareness right now, so physical health is a bridge for me to relate. Some people, in the pursuit of fitness, realize that’s a good chunk of it comes from mental health, which requires a bit of self-awareness. So I talk about fitness in the pursuit of the spiritual.

One thing my spiritual, philosophical essays don’t cover: Death, and its timing. It’s not a thought for me, though I bet in a few decades it will be. But I tend to write what is relevant to my life right now, and as I continue the process of living, I consider death and its timing to be a quick period at the end of a long-winded sentence. Maybe death cuts that story off mid-sentence, leading to an unsatisfying.