"We are all getting checked, and the checkmate may be inevitable."

Of course. It is. No one here gets out alive. However, there never comes a day when the old, wrinkly bastard you never wanted to be says 'I'm too ugly to enjoy life anymore.' We face more and more challenges, and we've been accustomed to rising to meet challenges all our days. Being wrinkly or gray isn't any different. It's just harder.

I'm still standing ladders, and holding 16' rafters in one hand while I start the nail with the other. I am becoming aware that I won't be able to do this much longer, however. I can't pound old sidewalks with a sledge hammer and turn the busted pieces into retaining walls any more. I, God help me, am becoming frail. Talk about challenges!!!

Still the morning light beckons, and the birds sing. Every moment of life is a cherished, sacred victory over death. Should I suck a shotgun because I can't jump motorcycles anymore? There's plenty of things that are astoundingly wonderful besides that to be enamored with. You don't want to die young. You just fear the challenge of growing old, and rightly so. It very much sucks, but it's a damn sight preferable to the alternative, which is not growing old.

Getting checked and outmaneuvering your opponent is the whole point of the game. That's what makes it fun, the fact that it's challenging and you could lose it all at any time. Revel in your challenges. A man is measured by his enemies. God Himself has a bullet with your name on it. There is no more powerful enemy, and that makes you a hell of a man, more of a man the longer you dodge His aim.

You're going to have to make your best guess as to what will last, how you can store up excess production today so you'll be able to have it when you need surgery and a week or two of recovery time, or some one to change your diapers. Bury some gold, treat some people very well - so they'll treat you well when you need it, deposit some money in the bank, plant some weed and prepare to harvest when you need it. Whatever, there are many different ways to save for retirement and moments of need, and people that survive long enough manage to do so. People that train less, are more stupid, are uglier, smellier, and dress worse than you. Nothing will excuse your failure to do so. There are reasons for everything, but excuses for nothing.

Don't think you'll wake up one day and life won't be sacred and wonderful anymore, and you'll be glad to off yourself rather than suffer that new wrinkle, gray hair, or joint pain. That doesn't happen. Lay your vanity aside and rationally plan ahead, because that's what successful men, dangerous men, surviving men do. If you really have merit, spawn. Nothing was ever harder than raising my sons, and nothing better demonstrated to me that I am worthy of it.