The Light Work of Youth and the Hard Labor of Old Age

The mat doesn't lie. Mackenzie Dern found that out the hard way at the Craig Jones Invitational. Ffion Davies wrapped her up like a Christmas present, finishing her with a reverse triangle armbar in the second round. Seven years away from high-level grappling, and suddenly you're just another face in the crowd.

Dern used to be the golden girl of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Winning tournaments left and right, taking on steroidal giantesses like Gabi Garcia, looking like the next big thing. Then she jumped to MMA, and the story changed. Now she's back on the mat, and it's like she's speaking a language she's half-forgotten.

It's not just Dern. You see it all over. Guys who were unstoppable in one sport try to cross over, and suddenly they're swimming upstream. Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders—we love them because they could do it all. But even they had to choose eventually. Time, money, or simple wear and tear makes that choice for you if you don't make it yourself.

Remember when you were a kid? You could pick up any sport, any instrument, any skill, and eventually become halfway decent at it. That's the magic of youth. Your brain's like a sponge, soaking up everything around it. But as you get older, that sponge starts to dry out. It’s harder to learn new tricks.

That's not all bad, though. While you're losing that flexibility, you're gaining something else. Depth. Mastery. The kind of understanding that only comes from years of focused practice. A 50-year-old might not be able to pick up a new language as fast as a 20-year-old, but put them in their field of expertise and watch them work. It's like observing a master craftsman. Every move is efficient, purposeful. There's no wasted energy.

But here's the rub—we live in a world that loves versatility. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none, right? Wrong. The world's run by specialists. HVAC engineer, journeyman plumber, heart surgeon, rocket scientist, grandmaster chess player—these aren't jobs for generalists. They're for people who've dedicated their lives to one thing.

So what's better? Being narrow or wide open? Versatile or specialized? Truth is, it doesn't matter what we want. Time decides for us. Even a guy like me, who writes about everything, really only writes about a handful of topics. Personal history that begins with life and ends with death, musclemen, weird sports, doing the work—these themes show up over and over.

It's easy to look at guys like Bo Jackson and think, “Man, they had it all.” But even Bo had to choose eventually. Injury made that choice for him, but it was coming one way or another. Football and baseball both demand too much to let you split your focus for long.

We romanticize the renaissance man. But look around. How many true polymaths do you see? Subtract the charlatans and the media creations—not many. And the ones who do exist? They're usually not the best at any one thing. They're good at a lot, great at none. Marilyn vos Savant, holder of the “highest recorded IQ,” was really only good at taking IQ tests and writing her “Ask Marilyn” column in Parade magazine.

That's not to say being well-rounded isn't valuable. It is. Especially when you're young. Try everything, learn as much as you can. But as you get older, you gotta start narrowing that focus. Find what you love, what you're good at, and lean into it.

Take Dan Marino. Guy was a quarterback, pure and simple. Bombed the Wonderlic, didn't run much, couldn’t read defenses, didn't try to be a Swiss Army knife out there. But when it came to throwing the ball in a straight line? Nobody better. He'd walk onto the field like it was his backyard, calm as you please. Didn't matter if the clock was winding down or if he was getting knocked around. He'd just get up, dust himself off, and do what he did best.

That's the power of specialization. When you focus on one thing, really pour yourself into it, you can reach heights that jack-of-all-trades types can only dream of. Marino wasn't trying to be a running back or a wide receiver. He was a quarterback, through and through.

But here's the thing—that kind of focus comes at a cost. You start to lose touch with other skills. Maybe you were a decent artist in high school, but you went into accounting. Twenty years down the line, you might struggle to draw a straight line. That's the trade-off we all make, whether we realize it or not.

Life's going to keep dragging us into the future, whether we like it or not. That inexorable process will sharpen some skills and dull others. The trick is to make peace with that fact. Embrace the depth that comes with age and experience. Don't mourn the loss of that youthful flexibility. Trade it in for mastery.

So maybe recent Dern's struggle on the mat isn't a cautionary tale. Maybe it's just part of the process. But here's the twist—Dern's working backwards. At 31, she's trying to become an MMA all-arounder after spending her youth as a jiu-jitsu specialist. It's like trying to teach an old dog new tricks, only the dog's still got some a fair bit of bite left in her old tricks.

Truth is, as capable as Dern can be in the octagon, she just doesn't seem like she'll ever truly make it big. Time makes specialists of us all. That's just how it goes. But Dern? She's trying to reverse that clock. It's a gamble, and the odds aren't in her favor.

In the end, we all face the same choice. Specialize and excel, or keep diversifying and risk being a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. There's no right answer, but there’s a clock ticking and we’re always already on the way out. Act accordingly.