I often stop and contemplate the course of life as I get older.  At 38 now, I am starting to understand many of the things my own father taught me or otherwise held to be true, at which I balked back in the day.  It’s only now that I realize that I was the moron and that my old man was right on the money.

Take fishing for example.  As a youth, I held fishing to be the most boring activity on Earth, right next to golf.  Well, I still hold golf to be boring as hell, but fishing has taken on a whole new dimension for me.  My Dad used to go out fishing once a week regularly, to totally cast off all the baggage and stress of the work he was involved in.  It was his moment to “zone out” and just “be”.

How many people today can just sit there and do nothing?  Nothing at all?  I’m not talking about sitting idly and skimming through messages on your cell phone to kill time, I’m talking about total immersion into nothingness.  I bet you’d have more luck finding a needle in a proverbial haystack than finding serenity of the kind that I’m referring to.

Fishing with my Dad in Ontario, September 2009

This past weekend I spent some time out in a row boat, just casting a line and staring at the water.  It’s therapeutic, I tell you.  I was on a somewhat remote island with my girl, camping out and totally “dropping out” of all the bullshit of modern society for all intents and purposes.  On that lake, I understood my Dad a whole lot better, and how fishing throughout the ages has been a getaway for men from all cultures.  No computers, no TV, no magazines, no traffic, no electronic sounds, no hurry, no stress, no bullshit.

The one thing that I never grow tired of is nostalgia.  I was born in ’73, brought up in the 80’s and I remain an 80’s kid to this day.  My critical development took place in the 80’s.  The 90’s may as well have never happened in my opinion, except for my initiation into the world of pro wrestling as an active talent.  Just like every generation before me, I totally understand those who say that things were better back in their day.  Those who grew up with Elvis will always hold his music to the best there is.  Those who grew up on Metallica will always hold their classic album(s) to be the epitome of music.  Those who now grow up on Katy Perry will come to reminisce of her pop as the best music in the world when they are older too.  For me, I’ll always owe my musical roots to Motley Crue.

I grew up on movie icons like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, and I still watch the first Terminator and Rambo: First Blood with a fond warmth in my heart.  I still hold 80’s pro wrestling, especially from the Crockett era of the NWA and Bill Watts’ UWF to be the best wrestling in the world.  I still warmly recall watching on in rabid fascination as Gino Brito’s International Wrestling from Montreal came to Thunder Bay, Ontario at the Fort William Gardens featuring stars like Dan Kroffat, Steve Strong and Abdullah the Butcher.  I still at times transpose back to a simpler time of Marvel Comic books featuring childhood heroes of mine like The Incredible Hulk and Conan the Barbarian.  As an adult, I have even bought back some of the comics that I used to own as a kid.  Nostalgic?  Hell, yes.

So yeah, as I get older and wiser I learn to appreciate the lessons and truth that my parents taught me.  Not that they were right 100% of the time, but then again who is?  They were right enough of the time, and that is good enough for me.

In closing, I hate to tunnelvision but I recall the words of an elderly man just before his time was up: “Just as you get to understand something about this life, it’s time to leave.”