unbounded

Last updated on 3 May 2025

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

-Marcel Proust

It started as a tiny kernel of an idea in a moment of desperation. Not even a kernel really. A speck. A grain. I was ruminating for the millionth time what a train wreck life has felt like (with one huge exception), when I noticed in the turmoil in my head an unexpected sliver of compassion for myself and what I was feeling. 

I told someone recently that aside from deeper, move vibrant and loving relationships with my daughters (more on that later), my life has felt unmoored since my wife left me in 2021. In the four years since, I made immense changes: moved 650 miles from the place that had become home for 33 years to the south, tried and failed to start a real estate business over, rented an apartment in a well-to-do neighborhood in this southern city, completely replaced furniture and belongings to shed any memories of my ill-fated marriage, bought a bike, bought another bike, went on a ridiculously expensive vacation with my daughters and their boyfriends, went on social security and took a part-time job and even took up a new sport as a distraction. 

All of these were done somewhat in haste with the ultimate goal of helping me forget the life that was and that could have been. 

But you can’t run from your past, particularly if you happen to drop it into that life backpack you carry. The past, they say, gets heavy.  

None of the dozens of books I read, podcasts I listened to, movies I watched or tearful conversations I had with friends (and therapists) stopped me from feeling like my life was an epic failure.  

But recently, I stopped trying to explain for myself what happened, where things went awry and began accepting the entirety of my situation as my personal and sole responsibility. That is, I started accepting that life sometimes hurts, and hurts a lot. Aside from her choice to end our marriage, everything since has been MY choice and only MY choice. 

It’s difficult to explain this change of heart I’m starting to feel, or better yet, this evolution of heart. 

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
-Robert Frost

Nothing about the loss of love feels good but if we’re truly honest with ourselves, we know that we have no control over the hearts of others, even those we are close to. 

What’s even more true I can quote from the poet Robert Frost:

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”

Thinking back over the past four years, it’s clear to me that I was rushing to get to the “after-heartbreak” phase where life felt like unicorns and rainbows. It’s been a storm for four years. A low, gray, drizzly, leaden storm. 

I recently came across this quote from Haruki Murakami in his book Kafka on the Shore:

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. that’s what this storm’s all about.” 

The storm is my life has been largely self-created. And I get to stop it. 

Recently, I stopped trying to explain for myself what happened. I started accepting that life sometimes hurts, and hurts a lot. Aside from her choice to end our marriage, everything since has been MY choice.. 

I’ve recognized in my own struggle to come to terms with the breakup and all its implications that there is true and valuable life experience to be mined here.  

I have this platform to share what I have learned, both as a tiny, insignificant self and as a member of the human race on Earth. What a wonderful opportunity! I’ll try not to fuck it up.

As I look through what I’ve written over the years, I realize I have always tried to share my experiences and observations. But not only to satisfy my ego. The goal has always been to start a conversation so that I might learn how to live better. And in that that others might live better as well.

Writing clarifies thought .So does talking through with another. Part of this is to understand my sense of things. This other part of my endeavor to capture my experiences is to connect with someone who might see themselves in my experience. To make connections between framing, experiences and outcomes. 

And while someone in Iowa or New Zealand, Sweden or South Carolina reading one of my essays might think my insights sophomoric or even idiotic, if they are impacted to do differently, I feel like I am contributing to the Universal conversation of what it means to be human. I still believe I’ve served a purpose beyond adding to the noise of a million blogs or a hundred thousand podcasts.  That’s all it would take for me to feel relevant–helping one person.

So here is the idea whose time has come to plant and nurture:

I have sixty-five years of life from which to pull insights and ideas from my successes and epic failures, triumphs and face plants, wisdom and truths. I am a 65-year-old, divorced, exercise-induced asthmatic, cancer-surviving endurance athlete father.

I have sixty-five years of life from which to pull ideas, successes and epic failures, triumphs and face plants, insights and truths. 

There seems to be a lot on the interwebs from women who are middle-aged or a little beyond, who are divorced or in relationships, who are facing health and aging issues, who are victims of a misogynistic, youth-oriented culture (at least in the US). 

That’s not my angle nor would I be a legitimate voice for them. I’ll leave that to women (all of whom are way smarter than me). 

In his book, From Strength to Strength, Arthur C. Brooks talks about a second curve, a time in one’s life when our career success is largely behind us and we begin to rely on a different intelligence, a different approach to life.

I want to explore this time in my life from the perspective of being an aging athlete and person, single, someone who has experienced deep depression and even contemplated suicide, a former real estate agent who failed to build a business in a completely new part of the country, a father to three incredible, strong and vibrant women who are forging their own lives. 

And before I go on, I have to qualify this: any misery I have experienced as a result of being dumped by my wife has been overshadowed by renewed, authentic, and loving connections with each of my daughters. In the storm that has passed, they are the silver lining.

I don’t know where this will go. It’s completely unbounded. I’ll know when the words become sentences and sentences become paragraphs.

So forgive me if you spot some navel-gazing and ruminating. What I hope is to share pertinent and honest insights from my experience. Some of my topics will be short and concise. Other essays might run a bit longer. If you’ll tolerate a little navel-gazing and ruminating, I promise to offer honesty and thoughtfully crafted sentences that I hope will resonate and move you forward in your life. Or not. Maybe it’ll just be a way to pass some time while you’re waiting for your chair at the dentist. 

-30-

Note: This is the introduction to what I hope will become a series of essays in which I discover and unravel my perspective as a man advancing through middle age. I haven’t mapped out everything I might write about but I hope you’ll stop by occasionally to see. As always, I welcome comments and deeply appreciate you taking the time to stop by. –cw