Life is boredom then fear.

Or at least according to the poet Philip Larkin. Fear lurks just beyond the horizon’s curve with the crawling truth that eventually everything will succumb. I’m certain I’ve played my final game of footy and probably cricket too. These are aggregated losses, joining the ever-lengthening string of diminutive deaths.

Instead, I now run thirty kilometres a week, partly driven by knowing of people whose knees or hips have called time on this. Every morning (lately under the cape of darkness) because I can, I stumble out onto the tarmac and trot beachward. I often wonder if I’m running towards a destination or from a spectre. The disquieting thought lingers: what if this is all halted? One day, of course, it will.

It’s easy to spot the opening to a sequence. A baby’s first steps, a first ever goal in a footy match, or a first love. These are commencements we can celebrate.

I love the first swim of the summer as the world opens up when the lengthy, lethargic days stretch out like a fluttering ribbon. While not endless, we sometimes pretend to ourselves that they might be.

For some pursuits, the last in a sequence can also be simple to note. Grand finals, New Year’s Eve, our last day on holiday. But for other activities, how do we reconcile not knowing which is the last? I like to think there’ll often be one more.

There’s always next year, until there isn’t, so I appreciate our beach. When I say swimming, not actual freestyle or breaststroke or anything as deliberate and exhausting as this. Just standing about in the greenish-blue shallows.

Late March and under the slanting sun, towelling off on Glenelg North’s crunchy sand, I promise myself with the next temperature spike I’ll be back down in the ocean. And then abruptly, summer vanishes and exquisite as it is, autumn arrives but swimming’s done. Some years, that anticipated next time just doesn’t come and I look back with minor regret.

To squeeze these moments like a ripe orange, I plunge in. Claire tip-toes along the sand and inches her way out, grimacing with every step. Waist-deep, we chat and look around us. My eyes dart about for stingrays and fins. I gaze north towards the West Beach Sailing Club and then south at the Marina. Flinging myself into a marching wave the salty stuff blasts by as, eyes open, I scan the corrugated floor.

Upright with water cascading off me, it’s a phantasmagoric instant and once more the beach, that narrow, ever-pulsing connector of ocean and earth, nudges me into gratitude and tranquility.

So, is adult life governed by fear? Only if we choose.