Old age is bad for you, but it isn’t necessarily going to kill you. At least not right away.

This concept may seem obvious, but I think it bears mentioning. Life is fragile. We complain all the time, it seems, about ailments and fears. I mean this culturally, socially, as something that simply is part of the ongoing discussion. And the older we get, whether that means moving into our 30s or 40s or through middle age into the senior years, it seems to occur with greater frequency. In my 20s I had back problems and knee problems and I used to bitch about them, more so in my 30s, along with headaches and other nonsense. So I get migraines. So I pulled that muscle. It’s all a bitch getting older. 

But old age is a pretty cool goal if you think about it. Sure, it has its drawbacks, but hopefully accrued wisdom isn’t one of them. And hopefully a healthy cache of positive memories isn’t one of the drawbacks, either. In fact, a life lived as though it is meant to be lived, one which has zest and purpose and positivity, is a life that should have value to those doing the living. If a person is merely existing, floundering through a life without purpose or passion, living as though there is no meaning to that life, then perhaps old age will be a curse of reminders of wasted time. Still, there is no reason that cycle cannot be broken, at any time, as long as there is the will to live with meaning.

I heard a story the other day about a gentleman in his late-70s who just had a resurgence of a cancer that had gone into remission some 30 years ago. The funny thing is, his current health problems are not from the cancer so much as his heart. Older folks have to deal with more health issues, it is true. And he has heart disease. So the cancer therapies are more of an additional annoyance for him right now, one which I am sure he had hoped to avoid, but an annoyance nonetheless. But the heart disease, that is a real problem, and a true concern for his family. It is always the biggest health issue that is the worry, the other ones, however scary or troubling they may sound on their own, are quickly relegated to the position in which they belong.

We should all consider that with regard to our personal issues.

Yesterday morning, when I was mulling over my own annoyances with the bumps in my life, I opened an email with a message from a family at my daughter’s school about donations they were taking up for another school in need — in the name of their daughter who had recently died about two hours after birth. Now, I don’t know this family at all, but my heart went out to them and I immediately dropped my own issues far down the scale of importance. What I deal with can be managed and won’t slow me down too much. I’m still looking forward to not only reaching old age, but sharing my ailing and infirm physical shell with the other people in my life as long (and hopefully as lucidly) as possible.

So, life is fragile. Planes fly unexpectedly into random homes and kill families. Bombs go off because there are crazy, psychotic people in the world without proper mental health care or insane religious convictions. Text messaging or drunk drivers run into other cars pretty much every day. I nearly killed a pedestrian once because I couldn’t see a stop light with my visor down. Things happen that we cannot always prepare for, big and small, and we hope to get to old age. I’m not afraid of death or dying, but I am terribly sad at the thought of not being a part of my child’s progress into adulthood. So I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that, as most people don’t; but I also don’t spend much time thinking negatively about the way that age breaks us down. Sure, extra aches are a part of life. But they are a part of life!