Old age isn’t for wimps!
I’m OK with the cantankerous old coot moniker. Cantankerous is fine. I sure don’t want to be just one of the herd. Even Coot has a raffish charm. It’s the ‘old’ that’s begging to bother me. Calling yourself old is fine so long as you can continue to exercise plausible deniability about the reality. So long as you can continue to deny that the old prune looking back at you in the mirror each morning is you. Even the best deniers eventually have to face the truth. And the truth comes in a way that you can’t avoid- pain. I stay away from mirrors these days but you can’t do much to deny that your joints hurt and moving hurts.
I’ve long been an enthusiastic advocate of exercise as a tool in the fight against getting old. It won’t stop the process but it can mitigate and delay. Unfortunately I’m an advocate but not always a practitioner. I’ve been slacking off. It seems easy enough in your head to take a few minutes several times a week to exercise. Actually exercising, however is harder. I’ve been doing more thinking about exercising in the recent months than actually doing it. Last week, however, I got back in the game with walking, sit ups and push-ups. Now I’m paying the price.
The relentless aging of my body has brought aching knees, loss of balance and an awkward clumsiness that I haven’t experienced since my growth spurt at 15. With my youthful optomism and energy long gone, none of these recent developments feels good. I can’t expect to ‘grow’ out of my awkwardness and pain has become my invisible friend. Still I believe that more exercise can help. I need to use my muscles, work my joints and be more active if I want to get back some of my grace and mobility. It’s not an option. So for the past week or so I’ve exercised and what do I get as a reward? More pain.
One thing you get good at with age is rationalization. Sometimes it’s all you have. So here’s the way I spin that. I’ve got ‘good’ pain and ‘bad’ pain. The good pain is what I get from using muscles that have been taking a break. My legs and my stomach muscles are complaining. But that pain is temporary- and my muscles will be stronger for it. As I rev up my rationalizations, I tell myself that my knee pain is less or maybe even gone. Perhaps my thigh and calf muscles either distract me from the knee pain or (and I earnestly want to believe this) using my knees has made them less inflamed and painful. All I know is that I haven’t reduced the level of pain, I’ve just spread it around.
So, while I tell myself that life is better when I exercise, I’m still dealing with pain. Yesterday I woke up with tight aching legs, stomach and chest. I even had trouble getting out of bed. On the plus side, I did forget about my knees. Such is life when you get old. It’s always one step forward – and two steps back. Only a chronic denier can stay optimistic about the long run. But without denial, how can you get yourself out of bed in the morning. There’s not much to be optimistic about once you pass 70.
Still, I can’t give up. If I still have a few years left, I want to fill them with activity. I’m not ready for the couch. So I plan to keep on with my commitment to exercise, avoidance of mirrors and going about life pretending that I’m the same guy I was 25 years ago- only with white hair.
