Growing up in San Diego, I remember learning about the Spanish barbarians who invaded the Americas and slaughtered millions of indigenous people in their quest for silver and gold. One of them in particular always seemed absurd to me: Ponce de Leon, who was apparently looking for a fountain that would keep him, and anyone else who drank its magical waters, young. Looking at it through my young, twentieth-century eyes, with everything we knew in the 1990s about science and healthcare and the world, the idea that someone would go looking for water that made people young seemed utterly preposterous – like, how stupid was this guy to believe these stories? And he thought he would find it in Florida?

But I was not only looking at his story through twentieth-century eyes; I was looking at it through the eyes of a teenager in California, the land of the young. In the last few days, I have been thinking a lot about his quest, revisiting my earlier judgmental stance, thinking: actually, his was, perhaps, the most rational and noble pursuit he could have been on, considering the knowledge and abilities of human beings at the time. He was certainly on a better quest than Balboa, or Cortés, or Pizarro, or any of the others who just wanted money, fame, and power.

The day I turned 40, I was putting my contact lenses in. I looked in the mirror and saw something new: giant, thick black hairs bursting out of my ears like fireworks. OK, there were only two, but I thought: this is where it starts. I grabbed tweezers and pulled them out, wincing as each hair pulled free of its follicle, before putting my eyes in. When I turned 45, I looked in the mirror; the hairs were still coming, and I thought: 40 was a dream. There is so much more now, so many changes that I want to record here, for when I am 70 or 80 or 90 and I want to look back and see how terrible I was feeling in 2024, and how good I actually had it.

My tolerance for caffeine, for starters, has plumetted. I remember being in Thailand in 2017, in a luxurious beach hotel with a standalone cabin on the side of a hill, using the kettle to make six or seven cups of coffee that I would down before noon; that was completely normal to me for decades. In Italy, earlier in the year, I would have three, four espressos a day – it was easy when they were a euro each, €1.50 at the most, and it gave me an excuse to go into a cafe or bar and smile and practice my Italian. But on returning, suddenly my tolerance has plummetted. I can drink one coffee before 8 a.m., maybe, and more than that is disastrous for my sleep, and thus the following day’s productivity. I didn’t drink coffee one morning, and only realized I had missed my caffeine window at around 2 p.m.; I knew that I would not sleep well if I had even half a cup, so I didn’t drink any that day. Only later did I realize that it was the first day in maybe 15 years that I hadn’t had coffee. And alcohol? I love the taste of beer, wine, whisky, but hate the idea that the quality of my sleep will suffer; sometimes, I am about to buy a beer at a grocery store when I think of the time cost and put it back on the shelf.

And sleep. SLEEP. This is what really made me think of Ponce de Leon – my need for sleep. Maybe a month ago, I got 7.5 hours for what, I belive, was the first time in my adult life, and it felt both like a revelation and a failure – how did I not fill that time up with something more productive? Why did I waste it by closing my eyes? And why did I feel so good? I started tracking my sleep, aiming for at least seven hours a night; then, I started turning off my devices at 9 p.m. so I could cut the blue light out, doing a few slow sun salutes, writing letters and reading and setting an alarm so I could turn the lights out at 10 for a 5:40 wakeup. And then I started thinking: what if I got eight hours, dependably? Would that be an improvement? Would I like that? Or would I miss the extra time of reading, writing, thinking?

Because time, now, is the most precious thing I have. Materially, I know I put Solomon and Croesus to shame; Westerners all do, really. But time-wise, I have a poverty mindset – there is so much I want to do, so little time to do it in, and I bitterly resent any encroachment on the little time I have. I’m revisiting the things I have now based on their time cost; if something requires time to maintain, is it worth it? What are my priorities? The answer, as of right now, are: family, words, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. When I was 21, 31, 41, if there was a club to join, I would join it. I burned the candle at both ends to make meetings, chair committees, get to breakfasts, coffees, lunches and dinners, parties, social groups, Toastmasters, lodges, any organization that promised any sort of community. I was a joiner, and if anyone invited me to spend time with them, I would move mountains to be there. Now, I have three priorities: family, reading, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. If a voluntary activity is not one of these three things, I am likely not going to participate in it. I have even stopped going to the Royal Scots Club just because if I have things to do, it is too distracting and I can’t get anything done, and if I don’t have things to do…well, there are always things to do.

Maybe I am thinking about this because I am now 45, and because two adorable, young children have me realizing that life is one-way – that we don’t go back to the way things were before, and we don’t go back to the way we were before, and that is mental, emotional, and most of all physical. I’m sometimes overwhelmed when I think that the ease I had when I was young, the swagger and confidence, is gone. Or was it there? Was any of this there when I was young? Was my tolerance for alcohol and caffeine there before? Could I actually function well on four hours of sleep, or was I deluding myself, and am I only now waking up to reality? Did I get anything from knowing tons of people; did I actually have as many connections as I thought, or was it all a dream?

All of that is hard. I am finding it really difficult to…not be in the middle of everything I can be, to disengage, to retreat, to focus.

Of course, there is a book for this. Kieran Setiya, in Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, talks about how, in midlife, our horizons narrow. I don’t think he uses this analogy, but I feel as if we are in funnels over our lives; at 10, 20, 30, we are in the shallow outer lip of the funnel, where we can’t see the sides getting steeper and closing in. At 45, though, my balance suddenly feels off – it is like I am tipping toward that dark spout that we all inevitably fall into, and I suddenly realize that there is no way to get back to the outer ridge, and all I can do is either give in and fall or try to scramble to stay in the same place, knowing for certain, though, that tomorrow I will be a little deeper toward that black, black hole.

I wonder if Ponce de Leon ever found a spring, and looked into it, and saw that it was both full and empty.

I want to record this moment in my life, to remember it. Later, this feeling will be such a constant companion that it will be forgettable; staring at the abyss will no longer be new. Maybe, one day, I will romanticize this time, too, remembering how difficult it was, and how little I knew.

Things are changing inside me in every way, and I can only watch them change and change myself.

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Addendum: the night after posting this, I had a dream. I was in some European city, walking around with Nathan Nanzer, an old friend from elementary school, on our way to dinner. We stopped at a food stall for a snack – it was busy, with people crowded around a small window for plates of tapas. Displayed for sale were jars of things from my past – Ohio honey, ginger wine sauces, fruit preserves. Everyone else got their food, and the woman turned to me; I ordered, and then something caught my eye and I looked at the square. When I turned around again, everyone else had disappeared, even Nate, and I still hadn’t eaten.

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Addendum two: I read this a few days later, and I think Uri might be in the same place I am.