There’s a joke best told in Chinese about a young man who sees a woman and complements her on her beauty. The woman’s response is “Where? Where?” (哪里, 哪里), which is a display of humility while also kind of saying “thank you.” The young man, a bit flustered, replied, “Everywhere!”
That joke comes to mind when I think about the pains of getting old. I ran into an old Korean man on one of my bike rides and of course our conversation turned to age. When he told me he was 76, I said, “you look very healthy!” He replied, “Healthy? I hurt all over!”
But I’m not here to complain about getting old. I’m here to give you some wisdom.
If you’ve followed my writing over time – and not many have – you’ll have seen my musings and grumblings on aging; along with more recent triumphs in my cycling, my diet, and my overall health.
The thing I’m really coming to realize though – and this, especially in light of my recent upturn in health – is that you can never really get back the energy of your youth. You might be able to maintain it for a while once you reach your peak, but you won’t be keeping it long. And there may be times, like now for me, where you can almost taste it after a good day on the bike. But it won’t last.
Now, this might sound kind of dour and dismal, but I don’t mean it that way. What I really want to accomplish here is the standard obvious – get it while you can. Take care of yourself while you can. Don’t think that there’ll be a better time — the proverbial “tomorrow” — when you can stop eating all those donuts and drinking all of that sugar. Don’t think that now, because it’s fairly easy to go out there and toss around a Frisbee with the gang, it’s going to be smooth sailing for the next few decades.
Here’s a news flash from the other side of 50. It’s not.
There’ll come a day when you think, “I can do that,” (even though you haven’t done that in twenty years), and, at best, you’ll pull a muscle. At worst (well, other than death), you’ll break something. I mean, just the other day I started with the thought, “Time to start doing pushups again,” and ended a short while later with the thought, “Am I gonna need surgery on my shoulder?” (fortunately, no…well, probably not – haven’t tried another pushup yet).
I’m thrilled that I’m feeling better now. And that perpetuates wanting to do more. Wanting to get out more and do the things that somehow fell along the wayside over the years. Of course one of the new problems you encounter with that is that you suddenly realize the friends you once had and with whom you did those things are now scattered across the globe (and I’m sure dealing with their own sets of aches and pains). But that’s for another post.
So here’s your advice for the day. Take care of yourselves. Don’t think it’s going to last forever. Life will catch up to you soon enough. Best enjoy it while you can, but even more so, be mindful of the quality of that life. Because there are plenty of people out there who’ve lived long enough, but not well enough. And they may be laid up in hospital beds, regretting choices they made long ago – choices that may have been simple enough back then, but were met with the thought that there was plenty of time to get it right later. This is why I’ve grown sensitive to talk like, “Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse.” How about, “Live well, stay healthy, leave a legacy”? That sounds so much better.
You can’t go back though to make it happen. You’ve got to start it while you’re still there in your youth.
