The sun is setting earlier and earlier every day now; summer is ending and fall is nigh on the horizon – the aging of another year. Me too year, me too! I often forget that I am old. I don’t feel old; I walk or hike readily at pretty decent distances and at a pretty good pace. I lift weights. My BMI is 21.6 and my body fat is 16.9%. Many body fat percentage charts classify 16.9% as within the fitness or good range for men, suggesting a lean physique with some muscle definition. I can get up from the floor or ground without issue or assistance of a chair or whatever. I am eating well and sleeping well. And then I look in the mirror…and remember that I am old.

But it’s more than the mirror to be honest. There is a mental or emotional component to this. I have a temper – not a flash temper and not an explosive temper though – I guess peeved or annoyed or frustrated are better suited than temper which implies anger. And most often the frustration is triggered by myself, either not being able to do something or hear something or see something, all of which are due to the progression of age.

Bad hearing causes me to not hear or to mishear and certainly to miss out on things. I do have hearing aids but while they can help me hear certain things, those things are often ancillary sounds – background noise that I really don’t need to hear and all that does is to add sounds on top of a particular sound I am struggling to hear – usually a voice. They do help with some voices as well, but not usually the ones I can’t hear well such as a child’s voice or many women’s voices.

My sight is not terrible by a long shot – I drive and read without glasses but not all that well in either case but certainly adequately. But when performing a task I often reach the limit of my vision and usually fail that task because I stubbornly continue instead of going to get my glasses.

But the worst is any task that requires dexterity. Threading a needle, while not something I often do, is an example. Tiny screws such as in toys and electronics always test my patience as my eyes and hands both balk me during the effort. Gluing or soldering something is also a guaranteed trigger as both eyes and hands are integral to the process and neither live up to my needs or expectations.

But perhaps the biggest frustration triggers are the things over which I have no control. I walk – a LOT – and am regularly frustrated by drivers who: pass me while significantly exceeding the speed limit, or those who refuse to move over and provide me the mandated three-feet clearance, or the drivers who go by me and never see me because their head is down looking at their cellphone as they pass me. I can’t do a thing about it and serenity comes from accepting what you can’t change, yet it still upsets me.

Another example is the Lotus pond; we have a small pond in our town that fills with massive lotus flowers every time this year – it always draws people to photograph or sketch or paint or even just gaze at them. I walk past it often and there are almost always three or four cars parked there. And usually there are just a cluster of people with cameras or easels, but sometimes you find the entitled person who climbs down into the pond enclosure to either take a closer picture or worse – to take a flower. I am not the flower police but I get so upset at the significant few ruining it for the trivial many that I am tempted to cross the road and read them the riot act.

Frustration – we all have it at times but I swear it gets worse with age. And while I am not certain yet, I believe part of it has to do with the knowledge you’ve crossed the Rubicon. For those unfamiliar with the phrase, when you say that someone has crossed the Rubicon, you mean that they have reached a point where they cannot change a decision or course of action. It originated from Julius Caesar led his army across the Rubicon River into Italy in 49 BC, initiating a civil war – it was a point of no return.

Similarly, as we age we reach a point at which we know we cannot go back. You can be fit, get out of shape, but for much of your life, you can get fit again. But at some point, you just know that you are no longer ever going to be able to do it; you are just too far down the road. And that is frustrating. I think we have all thought we’d learn to do something someday: play the piano, paint, or the like. Or we all thought we’d sit down one day and read (or re-read) the classics, whether Bronte or Dickens or Hemingway etc. But we often don’t; time moves quickly when you age and swallows years in the blink of an eye and before you know it, you can’t do half the things you hoped or thought you would. And that is frustrating.

 There are other telltale signs of aging even when you don’t think you’re old – mirror notwithstanding. Intolerance – well, too strong a word – difficulty accepting next generations is one of those signs. It is easy to accept the generation after our own; they’re our kids for Pete’s sake! And the generation after them is also easy to understand and accept…mostly. But as time goes on, each iteration brings more distance between what we know, what we raised with, and we are comfortable with. Words change, societal norms change, core value beliefs change, and everything they cling to is foreign to us. Of course this has held true for every generational iteration for as long as people have lived so nothing new to see here! Yet we react to it: we shake our heads and murmur that we’d never have said that or done that, or that we’d have never gotten away with that when we were that age, or that they just have no respect for tradition. That…is aging. We cling to the past like a scrap of flotsam in a roiled stormy sea, as desperate attempt to stay afloat and not drown.

I wrote this a few years ago but it bears repeating once again: consider eating a jar of jelly beans, you dip in and pull out a handful and the jar barely notices the missing handful. But dip into that jar again and again and after a while you begin to find it a bit more difficult to grab a quick handful. Beans begin to scurry away from you fingers because there is more jar than beans. And at one point, as you’re dipping deeply, your fingers will touch the bottom of the jar and you realize that time is running out on your jelly beans.

Of course, life-energy is a bit different than jelly beans! But it is just one more analogy to the realization we all face as we age – we’re running out of jelly beans – and there is nothing you can do about it. Nothing, that is, except to try to live with purpose; try to make the most of each day, don’t wait for next week or month or year to go on that trip or to try something you’ve always wanted to take a shot at. Because while there may still be time (and that is not a given) your body may no longer be up for it.

I am trying my best to seize the day, at least in a wider perspective. My heart surgery forced dietary changes upon me and they are all good changes. I ate a lot of junk before: donuts, fries, red meat, and processed foods. Hot dogs and burgers were almost a weekly staple of my diet and I would think nothing of eating half a cake. Pizza, Italian grinders, pie and cake – not the diet of champions!

And it forced me to re-evaluate how I take care of my body in a better way. Yes, I was hiking regularly, but that was about all I was doing with any consistency. I would split and haul wood, haul and spread dirt, and other types of yard work, but just not regularly – especially in the winter. Now I walk every day, not just a “walk” but a pace-intensive walk aimed at getting my heartrate substantially elevated: typically around 15-minute miles or better.

I have also added other exercise back into my life: lifting weights, resistance exercises, and pull-ups and push-ups. At various times through my life I have adopted this exercise component for periods ranging from months to a few years, but it has always fallen off eventually. I have no doubt that this latest round may similarly fall off eventually, but I have hope I can forestall that for as long as possible. I feel great, I am stronger and fitter than I have been in years and at 69 years old, that’s saying a lot! Stay well and get outside to enjoy what is left of summer dear reader!