That’s right…
52 years
or 624 months
or 2712 weeks
or 18,994 days
Whenever I see numbers like that, it’s difficult for me to register their magnitude. Like, are 18,994 days considered a lot of days? If I had not known and had to guess how many days 52 years were, I’d probably guess maybe 30,000 or something.?
April 2022 marks the 624th month I’ve been on planet earth? Mind-boggling. I mean, I remember someone asking my mom how old I was at one time, and she said, “Seven months.” Well, sure, I don’t actually remember that, but I’m sure it happened. The point is the numbers 7 and 624 seem like light years away from each other.
The older I get, the trickier numbers and years seem to get. Whoever coined the phrase, ‘age ain’t nothing, but a number’ got it right and wrong. A number is just a concept, an idea that’s not tangible, just like age. However, with that number/age comes tangible results. Gray hair, sensitive skin, stubborn aches, and stabbing pains that refuse to go away. It hurts many days to walk down steps. Part of that is my own doing: playing basketball twice a week, sometimes three times, is a significant contributor to my pains, but I keep going back for more week after week.
I’ve professed that I won’t stop playing the game I love until I can no longer walk. I know that’s ‌extreme, but that time may come sooner than I expected. Basketball has been a part of my life for 43 years, and it’s hard for me to give up on it now when it never gave up on me. Besides my incredible infatuation with the game, it’s the only thing that motivates me to exercise. I’d be hard-pressed to do sit-ups or run on a treadmill without it. Though basketball has brought many pains to me throughout my life, it’s one thing that’s keeping my heart pumping now.
Since finishing my college basketball career in 1994, the most extended times I’ve gone without playing some form of basketball are seven months after having back surgery at ‌45 and 4 months after the start of the COVID global pandemic right when I turned 50.
So I don’t know how many more days, weeks, months, years I have left to play basketball consistently, nor do I know how many more days, weeks, months, years my heart will keep pumping. But what I do know is that whatever those numbers are, I will continue pressing toward purpose and opportunity to fulfill ALL that I believe God has put me on this earth to do. And after accomplishing the remarkable feat of publishing a book last year, I think that journey is just beginning.