You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.
- Seneca
Over the past few days I’ve found myself thinking a lot about human frailty. I suppose being stuck on a couch with an ice pack on my knee and my leg propped on a pillow for three days provides for an overabundance of time to think. Being a writer, it’s no surprise I spend a lot of time in my own head, which isn’t always the prettiest place to be. In this case, it feels good to get a bit of surgically-inspired clarity.
There’s a part of me that’s always felt bulletproof, something close to physically indestructible. I played contact sports through college. Except for a few concussions and a dislocated finger, I managed to escape relatively intact. Over the past few years, though, things have changed, as if the wheels are beginning to come off the apple cart. I’ve sprained one ankle, torn ligaments in another, shredded an Achilles tendon, and most recently torn a meniscus in my right knee. I had surgery on Tuesday, and am at the moment relatively immobile. I feel like a ‘56 Rambler up on blocks in the front yard. Things could be worse, but I have neither cause nor reason to use this as an opportunity to feel sorry for myself. It’s not terminal, I don’t have cancer, and I’ll be something close to normal in a few days. In the overall scheme of things, it’s a minor setback…but it has set me to thinking.
A very wise man once told me that when it comes to things physical, it’s not the years…it’s the mileage. Turns out things catch up with you, things you thought you’d recovered from a lifetime ago. Sometimes you find out they never really went away, that they were only waiting for the right moment to reappear and reintroduce themselves. Time catches up with all of us…if we’re lucky to be drawing breath long enough for things to come back around.
I’m far enough down this road to understand how things end. If we’re fortunate to live a long life, eventually we embark on the long march towards inevitable decline. With any luck, as the physical side of things decline, the mental faculties will remain sharp and allow for understanding and- hopefully- acceptance of the process.
Aging isn’t a process that afflicts some while sparing the rest. Hang around long enough, and it gets us all. It’s the price we pay for getting on the ride in the first place. If fate doesn’t pick us off along the way, we play out the string until our time comes to check out. When all’s said and done, we all check out, few of us on our own terms…but that’s the deal, right? With any luck, we reach the end of the line feeling as if we’ve done the best we can with what we had, lived a good life, loved and were loved in return. That, as another wise person once said to me, is a full life.
In the words of the immortal Frank Underwood, “Time kills us all.” Yeah, I know; I’ve been watching way too much House of Cards during my time on the couch, but it’s true. None of us get out alive, so it comes down to what we do with the time we’re granted.
This may seem as if it’s taking a turn for the morose, that perhaps I’m feeling sorry for myself or that I’m depressed. I won’t deny there have been times when that’s been true, but it’s not what’s driving the bus at the moment. As I said at the outset, being stuck on a couch for some enforced downtime provides a blank canvas on which one so inclined may paint their thoughts.
I’m fortunate. Except for a few bumps and bruises, I’m in good health. Erin spends her days working with cancer patients, some in pretty dire straits, so I’ve no illusions that there’s room for self-pity. Not that it would play well in our house. When you’re married to someone who spends her days dealing with issues involving mortality, perspective is never far away nor difficult to obtain.
I’ll be off this couch before long, and I’ll return to more prosaic pursuits. Mortality isn’t a subject on which one should linger; it’s an invitation to stop living life and worry about things you ultimately don’t control. I can’t change what’s come and gone. I can’t know what the future holds. All I have is this moment…and if that can’t be enough, nothing else will.
Live. Love. Smile. Enjoy your health and the fact that you wake up each morning. As trite as it sounds, each day is a gift guaranteed to none of us. I hope to be around for a good long time; every now and again it’s probably good that something slows me down and sets me to thinking. My habit over the years has been to occasionally slide into, if not victimhood, then at the very least a tendency to feel sorry for myself. I’ve lost too much time, spent too much energy and emotional capital on things I can neither control nor change.
Perhaps the best thing about having reached middle age is the creeping realization that I’m on the back end of the actuarial curve. I don’t know where the light at the end of the tunnel lies. What I do know is that I’ve spent too much time on what I can’t change and not enough on what’s right in front of me. And I’ll start doing that just as soon as I can get off this damned couch.
