Gray hair and soccer

I've aged a year, or two since July. Er, June. See what I mean. It is no joke. I've reached the point where when I lay in bed, getting ready to go off into my layers of dreams, I can feel the gray hairs conspiring to come out and surprise me the next morning. When I married, those ashen reminders of mankind's frailty decided to say hello. When I had a daughter, they decided to settle down. But over the course of the last few months they've become emboldened and embraced their own version of manifest destiny and ventured down to my beard. I feel like a Just for Men's box.

So as I said in my opening entry (or my creed as a reader kindly referred to it), what is the meaning of this? Why have these last few months, which have ironically afforded me more free time than I have had since I was five, added such mental fatigue?

Today I think I have an idea as to why. It came to me through a passage I remember reading a few years back. It was about the beautiful game and read:

I'll never forget the pregnant milliseconds that precede most goals and help make soccer uniquely orgasmic. By what I mean, is the millisecond just after the seasoned viewers have made a realization. They have realized their team will score, but they haven't had time to exult. They are waiting to inhale...

These words were beautifully penned because they so accurately captured the emotion that makes soccer, and sports in general, so amazing. But I never took it for more than that. Until now.

I am beginning to believe that each person does in fact hit similar benchmarks in life and the decisions that come out of these pivotal moments are what separate us as individuals. You either embrace it and forge forward, or retreat and lose valuable time. I assumed that the defining moment came when you moved out of your parent's home, or got married, or when you trekked abroad. Nope, those don't seem to be it. I see now it is the juncture where you begin to set your own roots. For me, over the last five years I have been constantly on the move, but this last relocation came with the guarantee that I'd be sitting still for least four years. This truth has hit me hard. It is time to figure out what I want because I can not ride it out until I move on the coming summer. There is no move next summer.

So as I walked home this evening with the first snow of the season making its way down on me, covering my grays with white, I had that realization the author pointed out. Something is about to happen, I just haven't had time to exult yet.