Somewhere in Heaven, one exhausted guardian angel is looking down at me thinking, “This fool is going to get me fired.”
My Guardian Angel – I’m 60 years old, have a one-year-old son, still train almost every day in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, Muay Thai, and boxing, and routinely behave as though my bodies warranty has another 40 years left on it. Somewhere in Heaven, one exhausted guardian angel is looking down at me with an exasperated look thinking, “This fool is going to get me fired.”
I believe in guardian angels. I also believe mine drinks… alot. Not during working hours, obviously. There are standards in Heaven. But when his shift finally ends, I picture him walking into some celestial neighborhood bar, loosening his wings, dropping his halo on the counter and telling the bartender, “Make it a double. He was training Judo and Boxing again today.” The bartender doesn’t have to ask who he is. By now, everybody up there knows.
Some guardian angels must get remarkably easy assignments. Their people read warning labels and instructions, schedule regular physicals, throw leftovers away before they develop their own ecosystem and recognize that the phrase professional installation recommended probably means something. Their humans turn around when the GPS tells them to turn around and don’t consider YouTube certification enough to begin dismantling household appliances. Then there’s my guy. I don’t think my guardian angel received an assignment so much as he drew the short straw. Somewhere in Heaven, God handed him a folder with my name on it, and an older angel quietly put a hand on his shoulder and said, “You’re going to want to sit down for this one.”
In fairness, his workload has increased considerably of late. I’m 60 years old, I have a one-year-old child, and at an age when most men are carefully researching ergonomic recliners and debating whether pickleball might be getting a little too aggressive, I still train regularly in competitive combat sports. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Judo. Boxing, and Muay Thai. These are activities in which the central premise is that another trained adult is actively attempting to choke me, throw me through the floor or punch me in the head—and I willingly drive somewhere filled with young angry men for the privilege. In fairness I teach them how to do it better, which doesn’t always play out well for me.
My guardian angel wasn’t assigned a human being as much as he was assigned an imminent disaster and insurance liability.
Apparently Nobody Informed My Brain I’m 60
One of the strange things about spending decades in combat sports is that your birth certificate and your brain eventually begin telling two completely different stories. My driver’s license says I’m 60. Somewhere inside my head, however, I’m apparently still about 32. My brain wakes up in the morning thinking, Let’s train. My knees wake up thinking, We need to have a serious conversation.
I walk into gyms filled with young guys who weren’t alive when I started doing some of this stuff. They bounce around the mat, roll hard for an hour and recover by drinking a protein shake. I recover with stretching, mobility work, ice, heat, hydration, careful nutrition, strategic rest and, most importantly, the enormous good fortune of being married to an amazing physical therapist. If my wife had chosen almost any other profession, there’s a reasonable chance I’d currently be dictating this article from an adjustable bed while someone periodically turned me over.
Instead, I essentially married my own pit crew.
She can watch me walk across the living room and diagnose something I haven’t even admitted hurts yet. I’ll come home from training and attempt to stroll casually through the kitchen while she watches me for approximately three seconds.
“You’re limping.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re limping.”
“That’s just how I walk.”
“You hurt your hip again.”
There are disadvantages to being married to someone with a professional understanding of human movement. Most husbands can conceal an injury for several days. I can’t make it from the refrigerator to the couch. She’ll watch me sit down and immediately notice that I’m protecting one side. Then comes the interrogation. “What happened?” Nothing. “Does this hurt?” No. She moves something approximately half an inch and suddenly I see stars, she finds at trigger point and I grit my teeth, I’ve had grown men trying to submit me for years, and in the span off five minutes, she’s tapped me out 5 times and my arm, shoulder, or back is working again. “Hows that?” She asks innocently, and smiles. Better? I’m fine I say.
She stares at me. My guardian angel stares at me. Even the baby knows I’m not fooling anyone.
Without her, I genuinely don’t know what physical condition I’d be in. I’m basically a high-mileage vehicle that should have several warning lights illuminated on the dashboard, and she is the highly trained mechanic somehow keeping me on the road moving forward. The problem is that every time she gets everything running smoothly again, I interpret that not as not only evidence of her professional excellence but as proof that I’m essentially indestructible.
My wife and guardian angel understands the difference.
The Combat-Sports Department Has Requested Additional Staffing
I sometimes wonder what guardian angels think of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. From a celestial perspective, it must be confusing. I willingly put on heavy pajamas, walk into a padded room and allow another grown man to wrap his legs around my neck while everyone else considers this completely normal.
I imagine my angel’s first day observing BJJ. “Excuse me, sir,” he says nervously into his celestial radio. “He’s being strangled.”
His supervisor doesn’t even look up. “It’s recreational.”
“He’s turning purple.”
“He’ll tap.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll learn.”
Judo must be even worse because the basic objective is taking a human being who is standing vertically and making him horizontal as quickly and efficiently as possible, essentially hitting a person with the Planet! At 60, gravity and I should have reached some kind of gentleman’s agreement. Instead, I continue challenging it several times a week. My guardian angel probably spends Judo practice hovering six inches above the mat with both hands extended like a nervous parent watching a toddler near the deep end of a swimming pool.
Then there’s boxing. By the time he sees me putting on gloves so another human being can punch me, I imagine he doesn’t even bother calling headquarters anymore. He simply pours another coffee and mutters, “Of course he is.”
The absurd part is that I love all of it. Combat sports have been part of my life for so long that I can’t imagine completely walking away from them. They keep me competitive, disciplined and engaged. They force me to learn and adapt, and they surround me with people who refuse to let age become an excuse. There is something enormously satisfying about still being able to walk into a gym at 60, tie the belt, put on the gloves and do something difficult.
My guardian angel probably understands this too.
He just wishes I’d stretch first.
My Guardian Angel has a Bigger Problem: My Mouth
As much as combat sports concern him, physical danger probably isn’t my guardian angel’s most difficult responsibility. That honor belongs to the remarkably short distance between my brain and my mouth. Admittedly I don’t have the best filter between what I think and what I say.
There appears to be no quality-control department between the two.
A thought enters my head and immediately begins moving toward my vocal cords without being evaluated for usefulness, appropriateness, timing or potential consequences. Somewhere during that journey, I imagine my guardian angel sitting at a giant celestial control panel when a red warning light suddenly begins flashing: UNFILTERED THOUGHT DETECTED. As he frantically mashes a warning button in hopes of cutting it off.
He spills his coffee. “What did he think?” Another angel checks the monitor and turns pale. “Oh no.” My angel immediately understands. “He thinks he’s being funny, doesn’t he?” By then the thought has already passed my throat and three junior angels are diving toward me like Secret Service agents attempting to stop an assassination.
Too late.
I’ve said it.
The room suddenly becomes quiet. Someone becomes fascinated with his shoes. Another person studies his drink. Then I look at my wife and see the expression every married man eventually learns to recognize. It’s not exactly anger. It’s more a combination of love, patience, exasperation and scientific behavioral curiosity. Her face says, You’re 60 years old. How have you not figured out you can’t say that out loud yet?
That’s usually when my brain finally catches up with my mouth and I have a brief moment of internal reflection: Interesting. Apparently we weren’t saying that out loud.
My guardian angel quietly sits back down and opens another incident report.
Fatherhood at 60 Was Apparently the Next Logical Step
As if keeping me alive wasn’t already enough responsibility, my guardian angel recently received an additional assignment: I became the father of a baby at 59.
Nothing puts your age into perspective quite like having a one-year-old at 60. Babies have absolutely no respect for recovery days. They don’t care that you trained Jiu-Jitsu the night before, that your shoulder is sore from boxing or that someone landed particularly hard on your ribs during Judo. They are unimpressed by your carefully planned sleep schedule and completely indifferent to whether your lower back is feeling “a little tight.”
A one-year-old sees a 60-year-old father lying peacefully on the floor and doesn’t think, Dad looks tired.
A one-year-old thinks, Excellent. Playground equipment.
And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
There’s another part of becoming a father again at 60 that makes the whole experience even more meaningful: this isn’t my first trip through fatherhood. I’ve already had the privilege of somehow successfully raising three incredible kids into adulthood, which means I have decades of evidence proving that, despite all my questionable decisions, unfiltered thoughts and occasional belief that I can do anything with YouTube, determination and a positive attitude (sometimes with some colorful language when things don’t go to plan, which is always,) I apparently got some of the important things right. Now I even have my first grandson, which is both wonderful and slightly terrifying because it means my influence has officially reached a second generation. I look at him and hope he inherits the good stuff—the toughness, curiosity, humor, willingness to work hard and refusal to let life pass him by—while somehow avoiding the part of the family DNA that looks at an obviously bad idea and thinks, I bet I can pull that off. Maybe that’s one of the great privileges of getting older: eventually your mistakes stop being merely embarrassing and start becoming useful lessons for the people coming behind you. If my kids, my grandson and now my youngest can learn from a few of mine without having to personally repeat them, then perhaps all those years of keeping my guardian angel on high alert weren’t completely wasted.
In fact, becoming a father again has probably strengthened my desire to stay active. I want to be able to get down on the floor and play. I want to pick my son and grandson up without making the involuntary noise men begin making when they stand after 50. I want to run around, coach, explore, teach and be present. I don’t want my age to become the reason I sit on the sidelines watching life happen.
That may be the deeper reason I keep training. Yes, combat sports occasionally beat me up, but they also keep me alive in ways that can’t be measured entirely by blood pressure, resting heart rate or body fat. They give me difficult things to pursue. They force me to remain a student. They keep me around younger people and remind me that getting older and becoming old are not necessarily the same thing.
There is a difference between preserving yourself and living.
My challenge has always been finding the appropriate location of that line.
Unfortunately, YouTube Has Given Me Even More Confidence
None of this accumulated wisdom has improved my approach to household repairs. I’m not handy, I’m not good with tools, frankly, I really shouldn’t try to fix or repair anything. The four words that terrify my guardian angel most aren’t “Let’s roll one more round.” They’re much simpler:
“I can fix that.”
Something starts leaking under the sink. The air conditioner makes a strange noise. The toilet runs. A warning light appears on something mechanical. My wife suggests calling someone who actually knows what he’s doing, and my guardian angel immediately agrees with her.
“Listen to your wife the Doctor,” he whispers. “She has demonstrated excellent judgment.”
Instead, I pull out my phone.
For one glorious moment, he thinks I’m calling a professional.
Then I open YouTube.
I imagine him grabbing the celestial radio. “We have a situation.”
“What happened?”
“He’s watching a tutorial.”
“How long?”
“Eleven minutes.”
“Does he have tools?”
My angel watches me walk toward the garage.
“He does now.”
Half an hour later, the original problem remains, but it has been joined by several entirely new problems. There are screws on the floor that I don’t remember removing, three unexplained components on the counter and at least one piece that clearly came from somewhere important. Eventually, an actual professional arrives, studies the scene and gives me the suspicious look of a detective who already knows the answer to his next question.
“Did somebody try to fix this?”
I hesitate.
My guardian angel leans forward. Even he wants to hear what I’m going to say.
“It was pretty much like that when I found it.”
At that point, even Heaven can’t help me.
My Guardian Angel Performance Review
I sometimes imagine my guardian angel eventually being summoned before Heavenly Management. He enters the conference room pushing my file on an industrial cart because carrying it would violate workplace safety regulations. Three senior angels sit behind an enormous white desk while one begins reviewing the paperwork.
“Sixty years old?”
“Yes, sir.”
“One-year-old child?”
“Yes.”
“Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu?”
“Regularly.”
“Judo?”
“Yes.”
“Boxing, Muay Thai?”
“Unfortunately.”
The supervisor continues flipping through the reports. There are sections devoted to questionable food, improvised repairs, unnecessary ladders, injuries described as “nothing,” and an entire filing cabinet marked UNFILTERED THOUGHTS.
Then the supervisor discovers the most troubling report. “It says here you sent him an unmistakably strong feeling that what he was about to do was a terrible idea.”
“I did.”
“And he recognized the warning?”
“Clearly.”
“He actually said, ‘This is probably a bad idea’?”
“Those exact words.”
The supervisor looks genuinely confused. “And then what happened?”
My guardian angel sighs. “He did it anyway.”
That’s when I imagine the poor guy finally losing his composure. He explains that he has sent instincts, warning signs, strange noises, coincidences, minor injuries and concerned looks from my wife. He has made my knees crack loudly enough to frighten nearby wildlife. He has arranged circumstances that practically amounted to flashing billboards reading YOU ARE 60 YEARS OLD. PERHAPS RECONSIDER.
And I keep showing up to training.
Certain that he’s finally getting fired, my angel waits while his supervisor closes the enormous file. Instead, the old angel stands, reaches across the desk and shakes his hand.
“Outstanding work.”
My guardian angel blinks. “Wait, what?!? I’m not fired?”
“Fired? We’re promoting you.”
“Why?”
The supervisor gestures toward the mountain of paperwork. “The man’s 60 years old, trains combat sports almost every day, has a one-year-old, attempts his own repairs, ignores warning signs and still hasn’t learned that every thought doesn’t need to become a sentence.”
He pauses.
“Frankly, we’re amazed he’s alive.”
Maybe That’s What Grace Looks Like
Underneath all the jokes, however, there is something about that idea I genuinely find comforting. I’m 60 years old, and my body carries some miles. I’ve been punched, thrown, choked, twisted and folded into positions the human skeletal system probably wasn’t designed to accommodate. I’ve made mistakes, ignored warnings and said plenty of things that would have been much better left safely inside my head.
Yet I’m also extraordinarily fortunate. I have an amazing wife who somehow keeps putting up with me while continuously putting me back together, a one-year-old son who has given me another powerful reason to remain strong and healthy, and the privilege of still being able to walk into a gym and do difficult things. At this stage of life, I don’t take any of that for granted.
Maybe aging well isn’t about becoming obsessed with avoiding every possible risk. Maybe it’s about learning which risks still make life richer and which ones merely make your wife ask why there’s water coming through the kitchen ceiling. Maybe wisdom isn’t surrendering the things that make you feel alive; it’s developing enough judgment to keep doing them without becoming a cautionary tale.
Obviously, I’m still working on the judgment part.
So to my guardian angel, I hope you know I’m grateful. For every close call, every unexplained hesitation, every instinct I actually listened to and probably hundreds of interventions I never noticed, thank you. And I apologize for the workload. I realize you could have been assigned a quiet accountant who enjoys gardening, but somehow you got the 60-year-old combat-sports guy with a baby, a toolbox and insufficient impulse control over his own mouth.
I promise I’ll try to make things easier.
In fact, my shoulder has been bothering me a little, my knee has started making an interesting clicking sound, and my physical-therapist wife has suggested that maybe I should take tomorrow off.
She’s probably right.
Then again, tomorrow is Judo and there’s a competition coming up…
Somewhere in Heaven, my guardian angel just ordered a double.
