No Bouncing
When I was young (that number is a lot higher now than it used to be), my mom and her friends would talk about their operations over bagels, lox, cream cheese and Sanka. One of them just had cataract surgery. Another one had a hernia. Someone’s husband had open heart surgery and someone needed a knee replacement. When they were leaving and I was politely saying good-bye to them at the door, one of them turned to me and said, “At least you’ve got your health.”
That meant nothing to me. I wondered why these women spent their visit talking about such unpleasant things. I vowed that when I got “old,” I wouldn't do that. I remember idling in a parking lot of a restaurant as an elderly man in front of me was taking forever to get out of the back seat of a car. I turned to my girlfriend and said, “Why is he taking so long? When I get old, I’m gonna just get out of my car.” I felt invincible back then. I could exist on very little sleep and as an ex-ballet dancer, I had great balance and I could move and pirouette on the tips of my toes. If I tripped and fell, I’d bounce. If I got the flu, it went away in a day or two and getting vaccinated against anything seemed unnecessary.
Today, hip problems, shoulder pain and a number of dental crowns later, I get it. Surgeries are scary and losing our balance could have dire consequences. No more bouncing. I understand now that people get out of their cars slowly because they're in pain. I had assumed that being healthy was a given for someone as physically strong and active as I was. Boy, was I wrong. I had such shortsightedness, but it wasn’t entirely my fault.
We people in the West are not prepared for the inevitable. Our unwillingness to acknowledge impermanence makes us think we're keeping it at bay. Some years ago, my uncle was dying and each family member was going into his hospital room to say good-bye. When it was my father’s turn, he came back to the waiting room and loudly announced, “I think he’s gonna make it.“ My uncle died a half hour later.
My generation in particular, grew up with a contempt for aging. Our forays into psychedelic realms caused us to believe that time could stand still. We watched atoms dance around, we saw people’s faces shift and change and we felt immortal, untouchable in our world of wonder. Aging would never happen to us. We knew we would die one day, everyone and everything did, but I guess we thought we’d keep going along exactly like we were and then suddenly we’d just drop dead. Our go-to songs were about staying forever young and we followed Jack Weinberg, a political activist during the sixties, who said, “Don't trust anyone over thirty.” Today, he’s 83 so I expect he’s had to rethink that one.
Sometimes we become ill because of destructive lifestyles, but just as often, they happen randomly, even if we eat well, exercise and get plenty of sleep. When I see people around me who aren't as lucky as I am, who are struggling to make their way through a day, I feel genuinely grateful for my quality of life. Good health can be fleeting. Some of us are being challenged daily by illnesses and pain so the expression,“ At least you’ve got your health,” has taken on meaning for me. Especially the “at least” part.
When my mother was in her nineties, she said to me, “You just don't know what this is like.” What if she had tried to help me understand? That would never have happened with my mother. She hid her feelings so trying to explain how aging felt was not on the table for her. But if it were, if I had been able to grasp it in some way, maybe I’d have seen how blessed I was to get up in the morning feeling energetic and pain-free.
In Native American cultures, elders are considered “Wisdom Keepers.” They are respected and they provide leadership as they prepare their soul for the spiritual journey to return to the “Great Spirit.” They don’t get injections to erase their faces. To “refresh their looks.” I’m not decrying plastic surgery or getting fillers. It’s common here in the West and I believe that it’s a personal choice. I’m simply saying that Native American elders proudly display their wrinkles as a map of the experiences and life events they have lived. If our culture embraced aging in the same way, if we trusted in the process and took pride in it, I believe that we would have less fear of getting old and more pride in the lives we’ve lived. In the years behind us. In the challenges we’ve met. In the changes in our bodies. In the way we view our health and accept our human strengths and frailties in equal measure.
I’d like to be clear here that when I talk about embracing aging, I’m not necessarily talking about liking it. We don't have to like it to accept it and in my experience, most baby boomers find it challenging to look in the mirror as we get older. A friend of mine says that our eyesight gets worse as we age so we don’t have to see ourselves. But facing something we don’t like on the outside can remind us to look within at the beauty of all that we have loved and learned. Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, says that even if you were the Buddha, himself, a fully enlightened person, you would still experience aging, sorrow and loss. Expecting anything else is living your life upside down. Avoiding instead of accepting. Resisting instead of surrendering. Seeing what we wish was there instead of what’s actually there.
I had a friend and mentor named Isa who passed away from cancer when she was 62. She was a truth teller, real and warm and kind. As she was approaching her last days, I saw her staring into a mirror and smiling. “What are you doing?” I asked her.
“I’m admiring my wrinkles,” she said.
If we measure our self-worth by the way we look, we’re setting ourselves up for suffering because everything changes. For better or worse. If we step away from the mirror and feel grateful for the good luck of having good health, we can slow down, take a breath and say, “At least I have my health.” And that is really something.