Let me start with a bit of a disclaimer here. I’m about to describe some medical complications in this post, and I want to be perfectly clear that none of them are life-threatening or dangerous in any way. They’re just the result of growing older and having lived a life of certain requirements.
Yesterday I returned a book that had been loaned to me by the children of a family whom I love. And in return, I was given another – a large book written by Robert Macfarlane and illustrated by Jackie Morris titled The Lost Words.
It seemed a children’s book. Its introduction led me to believe that as it talked about words that were disappearing from the language of children and the magic of bringing those words back through the book.
But I found it to be so much more.
I’m at a time right now where I’m making adjustments in my health. A problem I’ve long had has worsened (as it has before) and I’m taking the necessary measures to mitigate its effects. You’ll find this though as you get older – the mitigation now isn’t the mitigation of the last few times you’ve been through it.
I learned a lesson along these lines when I was passing through my mid-40s. Around the year 2000 (while I was still in my 30s and in the Air Force), I was gaining weight. I was sick of bumping up against the limits of what the Air Force deemed healthy, so I decided I was going to lose it. But I wasn’t going on a diet (and I think this is an important distinction that we should all ponder), I was adjusting my lifestyle. I was going to stop eating the garbage I was eating. I was going to exercise – and that quite simply by walking. And I did. I had my Sony Discman and Dave Matthews and I would walk the streets and alleys of Songtan for an hour or more almost every night.
And I lost the weight. Ten pounds a month for three months. Over 30 pounds total. It really was that easy.
But here’s what I discovered in my mid-40s. Having been through a few moves and several changes in responsibilities (and thus drifting back into my old habits), I decided it was time to do it again. I thought, “Well, here we go – back to cutting the garbage intake and walking a few hours a week.”
And it didn’t work. Something had happened along the way where eating better and walking an hour a night with Dave Matthews didn’t do it anymore. I mean, it did. But I was only losing maybe 4 or 5 pounds a month, and it wasn’t nearly as “easy” as it had been 10 years earlier.
Fast forward another decade and I find I have no choice but to stop eating the garbage I was eating (and I’m really not very good at it). But the adjustments have to be even more precise now. Even healthy foods that I could eat before don’t work as well anymore. I discovered too that as you get older you may develop certain intolerances and allergies that you didn’t have before — like I can’t eat almonds and any kind of pasta will wake me up in the middle of the night (even if I’ve convinced myself I can handle it).
So, I’m on a 30-day regimen to bring myself back into balance. And because it gets a little harder each time, there have been some difficult days.
And those days obviously get me down.
Yesterday was one of those days.
So when they loaned me that book, I was at a place where I just wanted peace. After a difficult night and a long day at work, I just needed to lie down and rest somewhere. But here now I had this book, and it looked so interesting. So, I settled down into my IKEA chair to read (it’s so comfortable for that purpose), and do you know what I found between the covers? Peace. It was the kind of book that allowed me to read each page as slowly and easily as I wanted. I didn’t have to pound through it to keep the story moving. There were no cliffhangers (stress) forcing me to turn its pages. I was just able to rest in the words and pictures as each came along.
And it was just what the doctor ordered.
