…and, whatever happens, take it like a man.

That is the mantra my girlfriends and I recited our first days of college. The last phrase was spoken with purposeful irony. We were becoming liberated in a world we knew belonged to men, who we really did not think should be the standard of anything. But that story is for another time.

College was so wide open, so unpredictable, so full of new things that all of our old confidences fell away. We were instead full of fear and hesitation.

After a few long days of struggle, one of us made up this little pledge and it worked. It always unstuck us. It made us laugh. Thus armed with an effective mantra, we plunged into our first term.

This morning, decades later, I found myself repeating the mantra again. I had been again wondering to myself what lies ahead, and was filled with fear and hesitation.

Entering the later years means that you cannot ignore the limits of your life. But you have no way to put your arms around them either. Do I have thirty more years or one? Do I have time to reinvent myself again and again, to write six novels? Or is this here the final letter I write to life?

There are never any guarantees, but after a certain birthday, uncertainty hangs in front of you all day, everyday. The years ahead feel like a sponge, undefinable, potentially full of water, but also potentially dry, or too easily squeezed out.

I have now lived 63 years and could potentially live 30 more. My confusion this morning is that the next 30 seem intangible, completely up for grabs — As if I have a choice to accept them or even to live them.

To be clear, thirty years is nothing to shake a stick at. Which of my two 30 year periods lived so far would I choose to give up? The one where I stumbled somehow from birth to adulthood or the one with my feet pretty steady on the ground, that saw marriage, career, and the joy of two children? Neither, of course. So why does the next thirty seem expendable? So optional? Who would give up thirty years?

For some people, it seems, the last years of life never become anything but vague and unsure. And that observation makes it harder for me to have the confidence to pin the years down. Am I being foolish to plan for thirty more? Should I be hard and ‘wise’ and expect less? Should I not make ‘big’ plans?

I go back to my mantra from college. With so much unknown, with so much to fear, it seems the better part of wisdom is to plunge in and hope for the best. And then to also have a back up plan … and maybe be ready for a laugh.

Thus armed with the right mantra, I rise out of bed. I begin this term of my life yet again. Eyes open, ears attentive, ready to accept my lot, ready to run what I hope is a marathon. Ready as I will ever be.