For so many years, apparently like so many people before me, I thought that aging was something I could conquer by simple force of will. Confront it, call it out, defeat it -- simple. Yet here I am, at the sprightly age of 53, calling out, instead, my younger self, and telling it as it really is: Aging is for real, and you can't really contend with it on terms that you yourself decide. And yes, I mean you.
Aging in this sense means physical diminution. Not decay, not loss, particularly, but diminution. I am not now as I once was. And for years I fought against this. Even in my highly-educated, two-Masters-degrees-thank-you-very-much mind, I somehow held on to the naive and ill-informed perspective that, regardless of what it held for others, aging for me held no terrors and no threat. I would conquer that sucker like Ali conquered Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila. It would take the same amount of Herculean effort and almost superhuman resolve, but I would beat aging into the ground.
And well into my 40s, I held true to my interior promise. Name the physical activity, and I did it: running, cycling, weight-lifting, rock-climbing, basketball, softball, pickup family reunion volleyball. And I did well. And I had fun.
All that began to change in 2007 when I felt something snap in my left shoulder while playing the alluded-to volleyball game. "Odd," I thought to myself. "But not unusual. I can work through this. A few weeks of shoulder therapy lifts, and I'll be back to normal."
Oh, how pride goeth before the fall. I worked through it, all right. But the shoulder simply was not the same. Rest, ice, compression, elevation, stretching, therapy weight lifting, nothing could alleviate the clicking, the pain, the limited use of the left shoulder. Weeks went by, and then months. Soon enough, I had begun my journey down that road to orthopedic surgery.
(As a side note -- if I could turn back the clock and invest in anything, anything at all, 25 years ago, it would be orthopedics. I am convinced that, as I and my active, age-denying cohort age, more and more of us will seek out the ministrations of the bone and cartilage crew.)
So where do I now find myself, five orthopedic surgeries later? Well, for starters, look at the list in the third paragraph. Of that list, I can now safely include two activities: cycling and weight-lifting. The rest are gone.
How did this happen? Was I stupid? Did I abuse this body, fail to follow the dictates of the doctors, trainers, therapists, and coaches who advised me over the years?
No. No, I didn't. Not in the least. I was always a good athlete, not a great one, but one who worked hard at what he did. And I was never involved in "extreme" sports (whatever that means), unless you include top- and bottom-belay rock-climbing. I have always used good equipment (shoes, bikes) and good technique (as a track athlete, a cyclist, a weightlifter).
Yeah, that's right, I got older. Not old, not in the sense of worn-out, disposable, useless. Just older. And I can't do the things that I used to do, not any more. This just plain happened, and all my younger-adult blather about fighting it off by force of will turned out to be just that; blathering bluster.
On top of those losses of physical ability, my face seems to have fallen. (See my latest profile on Facebook if you doubt this.) Suddenly I'm not just a round-faced guy; I'm a formerly-round-faced guy whose face has started to sag like thick fresh paint on a hot summer day. No wonder my students think I look mad all the time. I do tell them, "This is just my face," and I'm not kidding.
I also seem to find myself being more of a curmudgeon than I ever had before. But maybe that's best left for another post.
So it is true; you can't fight aging. You can mask it with facelifts, try to stave it off with orthopedic surgeries, even get hair implants or dye the hair you have left. Those don't address the basic reality, which is that these physical bodies we were born with were never intended to last forever.
But that's not an entirely bad thing. There are benefits that have come along with the loss of these physical capabilities. I noticed a couple of years ago that I no longer need notes to teach many of the essays, short stories and poems that my students read. My life experiences have left me with a store of material for writing that should last me to the end of my days. I am pretty much fearless when it comes to household repair and improvement, even as I recognize more fully my limitations in this regard.
So, I'm learning to embrace my gimpy, sagging, grumpy self.
Aging in this sense means physical diminution. Not decay, not loss, particularly, but diminution. I am not now as I once was. And for years I fought against this. Even in my highly-educated, two-Masters-degrees-thank-you-very-much mind, I somehow held on to the naive and ill-informed perspective that, regardless of what it held for others, aging for me held no terrors and no threat. I would conquer that sucker like Ali conquered Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila. It would take the same amount of Herculean effort and almost superhuman resolve, but I would beat aging into the ground.
And well into my 40s, I held true to my interior promise. Name the physical activity, and I did it: running, cycling, weight-lifting, rock-climbing, basketball, softball, pickup family reunion volleyball. And I did well. And I had fun.
All that began to change in 2007 when I felt something snap in my left shoulder while playing the alluded-to volleyball game. "Odd," I thought to myself. "But not unusual. I can work through this. A few weeks of shoulder therapy lifts, and I'll be back to normal."
Oh, how pride goeth before the fall. I worked through it, all right. But the shoulder simply was not the same. Rest, ice, compression, elevation, stretching, therapy weight lifting, nothing could alleviate the clicking, the pain, the limited use of the left shoulder. Weeks went by, and then months. Soon enough, I had begun my journey down that road to orthopedic surgery.
(As a side note -- if I could turn back the clock and invest in anything, anything at all, 25 years ago, it would be orthopedics. I am convinced that, as I and my active, age-denying cohort age, more and more of us will seek out the ministrations of the bone and cartilage crew.)
So where do I now find myself, five orthopedic surgeries later? Well, for starters, look at the list in the third paragraph. Of that list, I can now safely include two activities: cycling and weight-lifting. The rest are gone.
How did this happen? Was I stupid? Did I abuse this body, fail to follow the dictates of the doctors, trainers, therapists, and coaches who advised me over the years?
No. No, I didn't. Not in the least. I was always a good athlete, not a great one, but one who worked hard at what he did. And I was never involved in "extreme" sports (whatever that means), unless you include top- and bottom-belay rock-climbing. I have always used good equipment (shoes, bikes) and good technique (as a track athlete, a cyclist, a weightlifter).
Yeah, that's right, I got older. Not old, not in the sense of worn-out, disposable, useless. Just older. And I can't do the things that I used to do, not any more. This just plain happened, and all my younger-adult blather about fighting it off by force of will turned out to be just that; blathering bluster.
On top of those losses of physical ability, my face seems to have fallen. (See my latest profile on Facebook if you doubt this.) Suddenly I'm not just a round-faced guy; I'm a formerly-round-faced guy whose face has started to sag like thick fresh paint on a hot summer day. No wonder my students think I look mad all the time. I do tell them, "This is just my face," and I'm not kidding.
I also seem to find myself being more of a curmudgeon than I ever had before. But maybe that's best left for another post.
So it is true; you can't fight aging. You can mask it with facelifts, try to stave it off with orthopedic surgeries, even get hair implants or dye the hair you have left. Those don't address the basic reality, which is that these physical bodies we were born with were never intended to last forever.
But that's not an entirely bad thing. There are benefits that have come along with the loss of these physical capabilities. I noticed a couple of years ago that I no longer need notes to teach many of the essays, short stories and poems that my students read. My life experiences have left me with a store of material for writing that should last me to the end of my days. I am pretty much fearless when it comes to household repair and improvement, even as I recognize more fully my limitations in this regard.
So, I'm learning to embrace my gimpy, sagging, grumpy self.
No comments:
Post a Comment