As I close in on my seventy-second birthday, I’m spending more time thinking about being old. I applaud the elders who can still run marathons, jump from airplanes, maintain the musculature of a much younger person, and so on, but I’m not one of those folks. Actually I never was, and I am certainly not going to get to that level now. I’m aware of the changes in my body (less strength and endurance, evidence of wear and tear on most of my systems) and my mind (more reliance on notes and schedules, moments of forgetfulness, and so on) that signal my entry into the next phase of life.
Frankly, none of that bothers me particularly. It’s taken me a while to come to terms with the fact that the things that were possible, and sometimes even easy, when I was thirty are no longer within my reach, but requiring that time stop for me while it flows on for everyone and everything else around me is not only futile but foolish, and my life is better when I acknowledge the fact that I’m not immune from the natural order of things.
The perspective of age benefits me in a number of ways. The bad habits and unreasonable risks that were part of my younger life now seem like ways to artificially bring the finish line closer, and that strikes me as a very bad idea. The recognition of patterns that take time to show themselves, patterns that only us old folks can recognize as true, makes it easier to sort out what I should worry about (almost nothing) and what I should not (everything else). Probably more on that in a later post.
I still have quite a few unreasonable fears and beliefs; it would be both inaccurate and presumptuous to claim any kind of enlightenment. My plan is to keep chipping away at them if I can and learn to accept them as part of me if I can’t. Haven’t got that part completely figured out yet.
They say at my age that genetics has a lot to do with longevity; I’ve inherited some good ones, so I have somewhere between one minute and twenty-eight years still to go. Since I have no idea where on that spectrum I’m going to end up, attending to quality as opposed to trying to force quantity seems like the best way of being.
I’m also open to the possibility that a new flash of insight may turn everything I just said upside down. That would be pretty interesting, too.