In the Big Game

By Jonathan Hixon, President, CMRA

I recently turned 50 years old and made that inevitable transition into what I call the third quarter of my life (wow, it’s a little hard to write that). Many years ago, when it came to looking at my age, I decided to compartmentalize my life like I was playing a football game. From about birth to age 25 was the first quarter, 25-50 the second quarter and well you can guess the rest, as I am securely in the third quarter of what has been the best game of my life. In this game I really do not keep a traditional score, but my strategies seem to change as the game goes on and I try to learn from my surroundings with each passing play. Like in a football game, the best and most exciting parts of the game usually are the latter quarters. The twist with this analogy is that I find myself not quite that anxious now to get to the last few minutes of that fourth quarter, but I must say the journey really intrigues me.

Getting older, what does it really mean? From the day of our birth we are all getting older. When we are young we strive to get older because we do not want to be perceived as young or immature. I still get a kick out of the fact that until about age 16, kids explain their age in half years. My 13-year-old son says he is 13 1/2 as does my 15-year-old daughter who is about to get her license, that fact alone makes me feel older. When was the last time you heard someone in their 30s, 40s or 50s explain their age as say, 47 1/2?

The cruel twist of fate is that as we get older most just want to be younger, but how young? Many people I talk to make the dividing line somewhere between high school and college age. People look back at their adolescence and teen years and seem to have little or no desire to head back to puberty, pimples and first date paranoia. We all have fond memories of past times in our lives like college, first loves, first job, marriage, having children and then whammo, you find yourself back squarely in that third or fourth quarter again.

At 50, I am pretty comfortable with my age. I saw it coming fast when I was 48 so I decided to get in the best shape of my life and see if that would cushion the blow. I got down to my college weight, when I ran five days a week and could eat absolutely anything I wanted day and night. Let’s just say to get back to college fitness stats I had to work twice as hard, eat half as much and go to bed twice as early as those days in the mid-1980s. The truth is, I made the commitment because I knew the third quarter of any game is harder both physically and mentally than the first half. What I did not know was that I could feel roughly about the same physically, but the mental part was tempered with years of good and bad experiences that truly do make us a little bit wiser. Don’t get me wrong, I never contested to be hanging out with the magna cum laude crowd, but I find as I get older I put the time in to do a good job with family and work and that has proven to be quite satisfying. I am learning not to sweat the small stuff and even something as simple as that revelation has taken me the better part of two quarters, what does that tell you?

So what’s my point and how does this relate to the recycling industry? Perhaps very little, but no matter what you do for a living it’s nice to know that we are all in the same boat. Life is full of choices and just the fact that you are taking the time to read this simple analogy of mine and not turn the page is a choice. Haven’t you thought about what getting older is about? My point is the recycling industry is really not that different from most businesses, it’s just a choice we all made at some point in our lives.

About two years ago my aunt was dying of cancer. When I sat down with her she knew she only had a few weeks to live. She was a very smart and successful woman and in her mid-70s with a large family—it was too early for her to leave the game. I asked her if it would be OK to ask what the meaning to a good life was and she replied it is simply doing something nice for someone else each and every day. She emphasized that most times it is something simple, like holding the door for someone or just giving someone a compliment on how they looked that day. So when you are conducting business each day, or just with your family, remember that simple philosophy to a good life.

The good news is that even though we all are getting older, the underlying fact remains that we are all still in the game and playing on the same field, and quite frankly, that is good enough for me!

Besides serving as the president of the CMRA, Hixon is vice president of ERRCO C&D Recycling which is under the umbrella of LL&S Recycling, Gateway Metal Recycling and DeVito Trucking with locations in Epping and Salem, N.H.

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