I used to think 50 was old, and then I turned 40.
I used to think 60 was old, and then I started running ultra marathons with a 56-year-old.
I used to think 80 was old, and then I received a note of encouragement from someone who just summited Kilimanjaro for the second time, in his 70s.
I am at the stage of life where age has become completely irrelevant. It’s just a number and has no control over how I live my life. I know 35-year-olds who can’t climb a flight of stairs without getting winded and I know a 70-year-old who just climbed nearly 20,000 feet in rain, sleet, snow, and gusting wind.
Twice the age and living with twice the adventure.
I know too many dads who aren’t healthy enough to play basketball in the driveway with their kids. I know too many dads who don’t do epic things with their friends. I know too many dads who don’t adventure past the football game on TV.
It’s not about your age. It’s about how you live your days, and I learned this lesson when I turned 40.
40, Stressed, & Inactive
I was 40 years old, consumed by work, not exercising, not travelling, stressed about things that didn’t matter, and wasting time wondering what other people thought of me.
I had given up on adventuring. I had given up on personal hobbies. I had given up on my own mental and physical health.
After sharing my frustrations with a close friend, he encouraged me to go outside and run. I hadn’t run in 25 years, but I tried it anyway. And over the next year, I kept at it, ran in a couple races, and found a great hobby and community. I also saw my stress diminish and my joy in life increase.
Running helped me rediscover adventure.
Finding Adventure Again
It’s easy to fill your schedule when you have a young family, and I’ve committed to invest in them before I invest in personal hobbies. But, I’ve learned a couple of things recently:
- If I don’t have adventure in my own life, I am not the best version of myself for my family, and I’m also not giving my sons a clear picture of what adulthood can be like.
- A lot of my adventures can include them.
The last 5 years, I have rediscovered my sense of adventure, and as adult men, we desperately need this in our life.
We need to adventure with our wife, our children, and our friends … in that order.
Adventuring With My Wife
I’m sure there’s a graph out there on how our time with our spouse changes through different seasons of life. Here’s how it looked for me.
Season 1: We didn’t have our first son until our fourth year of marriage, so we had a lot of time together. But we were also adjusting to working full-time and then later, we moved to a new state for graduate school. We were busy and our financial resources were limited.
Season 2: We started our family, and by the eighth year of marriage, we had a 4-year-old, a 2-year-old, and a newborn. My wife was a stay-at-home mom and I quit my job to go full-time with my marketing agency. It was a very stressful time and again, our financial and time resources were limited.
Season 3: This is our current season. Our boys are teenagers and we can leave them home alone to sneak out for dates and they can stay with grandparents for days at a time. We have more financial resources, but we also have an insane weekly schedule since all 3 boys play at least one school sport.
Season 4: We are a few years away from this one, but I suppose our next season is when they leave for college, and we become empty nesters.
For us, it’s less about adventuring and more about dating. When you have a busy household, going to your favorite restaurant with no phones feels like an adventure.
The best marital advice ever shared with me was to keep dating your spouse.
Our dating has looked different through our various seasons.
During Season 1, it was watching cable TV and splitting a Subway sandwich or a Sonic 2-for-1 in between studying for graduate school classes.
During Season 2, it was conversations on the porch over a drink, after the kids went to bed. We fit in an occasional dinner out thanks to our parents. This was definitely our hardest dating season.
During Season 3, it’s been a mixture. It’s a “walk and talk” between drop offs and a once-a-year weekend getaway. Or we leave the boys alone and grab dinner.
We have had seasons where our dating life was unhealthy and we’ve had seasons where it thrived, but we’ve always fought to find the time, and between the two of us, someone has initiated and said the hard words: “I need more time with you.”
And every time, the work required to date, because it’s definitely work to prepare to leave, has been worth it. It’s worth it because it keeps us healthy and also makes us better parents. We want our boys to see parents who date and joke and kiss in front of them.
So, adventuring with my spouse is more about dating in this season of life.
Adventuring With My Children
My adventures with my teenage sons are mostly outdoors and involve an activity that could lead to either an injury or a great story, or both.
Most of our adventures start when I simply join what they’re doing. Rather than being a bystander, I join in. I’ll also add in some larger adventures that they haven’t lived long enough to dream up, and these are usually tied to some personal interest they have.
Here’s a few recent adventures – some required a lot of planning and an expense, while others just required walking out of the front door and exploring what’s around us.
- Running a trail 5k race
- Entering a cage and being dropped into a shark tank
- Fishing in a secret, stocked pond
- Pitching a tent in the backyard
- Climbing on the roof of the shed and shooting targets with the BB gun
- Setting lots of stuff on fire
- Gross drink challenge
- Reeling in sharks in the Atlantic Ocean
- Buying a used batting cage for the backyard
- Swimming with sting rays
- Riding towering rollercoasters
- Bellyflop contest in the pool
- Snowball fights
- Exploring a different country
- Riding every waterslide at the park
- Meeting and learning to talk to pro athletes
I’ve also found that a one-on-one adventure is the best way to have a conversation with a teenage boy. Asking about their day at the dinner table nets nothing, other than “It was good.” Asking that same question while throwing a baseball in the front yard or playing a round of HORSE in the driveway opens the flood gates. I’ve learned that the best conversations with my sons happen during activity.
Adventuring With My Friends
For the last few years, I’ve tried to plan one big adventure per year with my close friends.
- Watched a three-game series of the Braves vs. Nationals in Washington, D.C.
- Saw a concert at Red Rocks in Colorado and ran trails in Boulder and Winter Park
- Spent 5 days in the Grand Canyon and completed the Rim to Rim to Rim run
- Rented a mountain cabin and hiked, grilled, drank, and played cards
- Ran along the Florida Trail and completed the Forgotten Florida 100 mile run
We also take mini-adventures, like seeing local bands my wife doesn’t like or running trails on the weekends. And we have a great group text that is all about planning the next adventure! One of those adventures is 8 years away, but we’re already planning it (a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail), while one is later this fall (running around the base of Mount Hood in Oregon).
There was a time when I felt guilty for adventuring with my friends, but I’ve realized it’s an important part of me being physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy. While adventuring with my friends ranks in third place behind adventuring with my wife and sons, it is still a priority for me.
If you’re in a similar life stage, and I could offer one piece of advice, it would be this:
Life is not over at 40, and if you prioritize correctly, I think it’s where life begins.
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