Hate the Spurs, but that’s one hell of a play by Manu.

One of my favorite writers, Nelson George, posted this on facebook today and I thought it was worth sharing:
Two friends of mine — one of nearly thirty years and the other a solid twentyfive — are in New York area hospitals. Middle aged men now with kids, wives, wifeys and a long track record to live and up and down to. Being in the middle range of this life means your body, hopefully just in small ways but often in jarringly big ones, begins to slowly break down. You can arrest this process with a god diet, exercise and a stable life rhythm. But this process can not be stopped. It is a story arch we all live through. We can change some of the plot points. We can have surprise second and third act twist. But we all know how the story ends — we just move to it at different paces. Visiting my friends who right now are frail, slow moving and definitely a little scared, makes all the meetings and plans I had before and after feel hollow. What’s so crucial, what’s so pressing, what’s so important is feeling very silly for me at the moment. Made me think that we all end up at a hospital somewhere in a nighty trying to walk down the hall with a nurse by our side. Maybe we have tubes dangling out of us. Maybe we have some of our hair shaved off or a nasty hole somewhere in our stomach. But its gonna happen. And that’s only if we’re lucky. If we don’t have enough insurance or had a regular check up we could just keel over one night when that Advil just wasn’t enough. This may sound a little melancholy but its always sobering when you look life in the face and see right to its core. It won’t stop me from moving and grooving out into the new day or from striving madly for that dream(s) that haunt me — after all, what are all but dream chasers? — but your body’s destiny is your destiny. So while this flesh is still sweating and muscular and hungry, you must feed it, and feed it well. Time passes. The days go by. Kiss your babies. Hold your lover. Feel the wind against your skin. And make sure you look over the buildings, pass the cars and marvel at the sky. Take a damn deep ass breath and fill those lungs with air and hold it a very long time. Exhaling is a beautiful thing and brings you closer to the inner workings of this marvelous, unreliable machine we live in. peace