I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old. ~Benjamin Franklin
My idea of a middle-aged spread used to be 40 acres in Wyoming. Not any more. It's not like I register on the richter scale everytime I plop out of bed, but let's just say I could stand to lose a few... um, dozen. It's time to diet, or better yet, change my diet, and finally come to grips with the fact that I'm no longer 20 years old, when I could lose weight just sitting on the couch for an extended period.
I have two major obstacles to overcome: pizza and subs. This is a significant challenge. I live in the "Bread Belt", on the East Coast of the US, where pushers deal mouth-watering, cheese-and-meat-laden, crusty breads on practically every corner. The cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, for example, are crack for the palette, and there's been many an occasion when I passed out on a park bench after taking one too many hits. There are plenty of placebos for sure - the chains manage to survive here, just like everywhere, on speedy service and mass advertising - but the natives know the good stuff hides in scruffy joints run by people with foreign accents - Italians, Greeks, or anyone from Jersey. Trying to give this up would be like living in the Bible Belt and trying to give up church. Maybe I can track down a carbohydrate treatment center, where I can wean myself down to a mere slice or two of New York pizza. Who am I kidding... this is going to have to be cold turkey (which makes a killer sub around these parts, by the way).
I'm not entirely new to the rigors of being on a diet, though. I did it once back in 6th grade, along with a raft of oversized classmates who were trying to make a weight limit to play parochial football. By some odd coincidence, we were all big kids, which I think was mostly an evolutionary survival response to the fact that our nuns were the size of NFL linemen. The chief of police of the city of Denver decided we needed a football team, and he'd be the coach, no doubt thinking that he'd rather deal with us sooner than later. So we starved ourselves for a few weeks, spent our leisure time running up and down the school stairs in plastic bags, and we all made weight. Except for "Moose", who was even bigger than a nun.
This time, I think I'll skip the plastic bags and running stairs, thank you. And the starvation part doesn't seem to have the same appeal anymore either. Moving to another part of the country where the cuisine is less tempting (Nebraska comes to mind) has some merit, but it's not very practical. No, it's time to face the mirror and make all the hard, reasonable, long-term dietary decisions that need to be made for a 50 year old body, and somehow muster the fortitude to stick with them.
Switching to broccoli pizza, however, is not gonna happen.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
The Knowledge of Youth
As for me, all I know is that I know nothing. ~ Socrates
There are a couple reigning stereotypes about the aging mind... or, at least, a couple that occur to me at the moment. One is that as we age, we gain wisdom. This is presumably due to the massive reference library of stupid moves that we've accumulated over the years, and which can be consulted on an as-needed basis. Mine, for example, rivals the Library of Congress at this point, and is still growing. The other is that we lose either our ability or interest in keeping up with all the changes around us - technological or otherwise - and gradually devolve into a blissful, functional illiteracy of sorts. I couldn't send a text message if my life depended on it, wouldn't know a Tivo if it hit me in the face, and do all my social networking by leaning over the backyard fence.
There is, however, another development that arises about this time in life - a nagging sense that you know nothing, and understand even less. It's not that you don't have facts and figures at your disposal from your years of education; it's that suddenly you realize you don't really "get it", as if a house of cards collapsed just as you were putting the last roof tile in place. I would say it's not a universal affliction, maybe not even common, but I am definitely not alone. Bill Bryson, in his wonderful book A Short History of Nearly Everything, described the moment when his cards collapsed:
As it turns out, I think I can learn everything I need to know from my youngest son. He wakes, he plays, he works, he laughs, he cries, he tries, he fails, he wins, he learns, he reads, he eats, he sleeps. And he knows absolutely everything worth knowing.
There are a couple reigning stereotypes about the aging mind... or, at least, a couple that occur to me at the moment. One is that as we age, we gain wisdom. This is presumably due to the massive reference library of stupid moves that we've accumulated over the years, and which can be consulted on an as-needed basis. Mine, for example, rivals the Library of Congress at this point, and is still growing. The other is that we lose either our ability or interest in keeping up with all the changes around us - technological or otherwise - and gradually devolve into a blissful, functional illiteracy of sorts. I couldn't send a text message if my life depended on it, wouldn't know a Tivo if it hit me in the face, and do all my social networking by leaning over the backyard fence.
There is, however, another development that arises about this time in life - a nagging sense that you know nothing, and understand even less. It's not that you don't have facts and figures at your disposal from your years of education; it's that suddenly you realize you don't really "get it", as if a house of cards collapsed just as you were putting the last roof tile in place. I would say it's not a universal affliction, maybe not even common, but I am definitely not alone. Bill Bryson, in his wonderful book A Short History of Nearly Everything, described the moment when his cards collapsed:
Then much later - about four or five years ago - I was on a long flight across the Pacific, staring idly out the window at moonlit ocean, when it occurred to me with a certain uncomfortable forcefulness that I didn't know the first thing about the only planet I was ever going to live on.It's the Great Unraveling, and it leaves you (well, me) with a sense of desperation of sorts, as if you have to relearn everything and get it right this time. I've tried a couple of remedies (not counting Bill's book). On one hand, I thought perhaps this was some intrinsic failure of western thought, steeped in analysis and logic, and a more Zen-like outlook was needed.
The more you know, the less you understand. ~ Tao Te ChingMy other idea was to try to get to the bottom of things. The root of all knowledge in any subject. Want to understand people? Forget Freud - study chimpanzees (I do recommend this, by the way). Want to understand physical science? Forget... well, just forget it, because no matter which way you turn, you'll eventually fall off the cliff of quantum physics, where mind-altering drugs start to look increasingly attractive.
As it turns out, I think I can learn everything I need to know from my youngest son. He wakes, he plays, he works, he laughs, he cries, he tries, he fails, he wins, he learns, he reads, he eats, he sleeps. And he knows absolutely everything worth knowing.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
On Remembering
May you never forget what his worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten. ~ Irish Blessing
I know, I know. If ever there was a tired subject about getting a little gray in the temples, it's the fact that you can't remember things anymore. Happens to everyone, I guess, or at least most everyone I know. I admire greatly those who take it in stride with a graceful air and little chuckle; I'm more inclined to invent new sailor's language when it happens to me. Needless to say, I need to work on this, in more ways than one.
My plan, initially, was to tackle this with conscious effort. I'm just not concentrating. Not paying attention. So, I was determined this week to make sure that all the items that were supposed to show up with me at work, actually showed up with me when I arrived at the office. Laptop? Check. Power cord? Check. Matching shoes? Check. This worked fabulously, except that for two days in a row I marched out to the car, perfectly appointed, and proceeded to spend the next few minutes fumbling around looking for my keys, which I had conveniently forgotten back in the house. Yes, I can laugh about that. Backing the car out of the garage with the door still down, however, wasn't so funny (well, my kids thought it was).
My wife thinks the answer is fish oil. I'm willing to give it a shot, but if cats start following me around like the pied piper, that's out.
I had another strategy not too long ago, which was to play brain-games on my kid's Nintendo DS. These games are scientifically designed - or so the maker claims - to "stimulate your prefrontal cortex" by pissing you off beyond the pale. According to this software, my brain is 85 years old. Which wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't for all the snitty remarks that emanate from this bizarre, decapitated cartoon head floating around on the screen... Feeling a bit tired, are we? No, actually, I'm feeling like conducting a scientific experiment that involves thrusting this stylus through the screen. This is the part where I get defensive. It's not that I can't solve all these challenging, advanced math questions like 1+6, 8+2, quickly, it's that I can't write the answer down in a way that it can recognize. This isn't brain training, it's Sister Mary Devota's penmanship class, and I'm back in second grade, flunking it for a second time.
Besides, what's wrong with having an 85 year old brain? 85 year old brains are cool and deep and placid, like the Mississippi river flowing out over the delta after a long journey. They're busy pondering life's mysteries, while the flotsam of daily tasks drift away on the current. So when I go outside at night to wheel the trash to the curb, pausing instead to get lost in the winter star fields of Orion, marvelling at the beauty of the heavens, freed from the tyranny of any ticking clock, that's Ok. I'll remember to take the trash out next time.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Time, For a Change
In youth the days are short and the years are long; in old age the years are short and the days long. ~Nikita Ivanovich Panin
And in-between, the days are short and the years are too. ~ Gyrfalc
Time is on my mind a lot these days, because quite frankly, I don't have any, and I don't understand why. There seems to be some principle of physics - relativity, perhaps - at work here; one which our professors conveniently never mentioned back in school, probably because they were old and didn't have time. Yes, I get the part about if I'm on a train and I throw a ball and there's an observer on the ground and all that, by why the hell didn't didn't they tell us that as we got older, time would compress in some sort of aging doppler effect?
For the benefit of society, I have turned my scientific attention to the matter, and have calculated a new universal constant - feel free to call it "Gyrfalc's Constant" in any article celebrating my achievement - which is the ratio of actual time elapsed to percieved time elapsed as one reaches, er, middle agish. And that number is... 1.6.
Allow me to illustrate. I work with a young couple who recently had a baby boy, their first. I recall that the baby shower was, seemingly, just a few months ago. If pressed, if forced to lay down good money, I would have said that their child was maybe 12 months old, tops. So, the other day the proud father calls me over to admire the latest photo of his son, who is, as it turns out, 19 months old. And 19 months divided by 12 months is a ratio of 1.6, approximately.
This is not a singular example; the same time compression seems to pervade everything I do these days. Come back from lunch at 1:00, work for an hour, and discover that it's 2:36 pm. Go to a one-hour meeting, and you're in there an hour and a half, although in this case, some sort of dark anti-matter force that emanates from managerial types can reverse the effect and make it feel like three hours.
So, while younger folk are enjoying a full 24 hour day, mine is compressed to a mere 15 hours by the aging doppler effect. Granted, the scientific jury is out as to whether this effect applies while sleeping, so for the sake of argument, we could say that in a 16 hour waking day, I have 10 usable hours: 8 for work, and 2 for fixing whatever disaster arose while I was away from home.
I'd love to say more, but I gotta run and get the dishes done while I still have time.
And in-between, the days are short and the years are too. ~ Gyrfalc
Time is on my mind a lot these days, because quite frankly, I don't have any, and I don't understand why. There seems to be some principle of physics - relativity, perhaps - at work here; one which our professors conveniently never mentioned back in school, probably because they were old and didn't have time. Yes, I get the part about if I'm on a train and I throw a ball and there's an observer on the ground and all that, by why the hell didn't didn't they tell us that as we got older, time would compress in some sort of aging doppler effect?
For the benefit of society, I have turned my scientific attention to the matter, and have calculated a new universal constant - feel free to call it "Gyrfalc's Constant" in any article celebrating my achievement - which is the ratio of actual time elapsed to percieved time elapsed as one reaches, er, middle agish. And that number is... 1.6.
Allow me to illustrate. I work with a young couple who recently had a baby boy, their first. I recall that the baby shower was, seemingly, just a few months ago. If pressed, if forced to lay down good money, I would have said that their child was maybe 12 months old, tops. So, the other day the proud father calls me over to admire the latest photo of his son, who is, as it turns out, 19 months old. And 19 months divided by 12 months is a ratio of 1.6, approximately.
This is not a singular example; the same time compression seems to pervade everything I do these days. Come back from lunch at 1:00, work for an hour, and discover that it's 2:36 pm. Go to a one-hour meeting, and you're in there an hour and a half, although in this case, some sort of dark anti-matter force that emanates from managerial types can reverse the effect and make it feel like three hours.
So, while younger folk are enjoying a full 24 hour day, mine is compressed to a mere 15 hours by the aging doppler effect. Granted, the scientific jury is out as to whether this effect applies while sleeping, so for the sake of argument, we could say that in a 16 hour waking day, I have 10 usable hours: 8 for work, and 2 for fixing whatever disaster arose while I was away from home.
I'd love to say more, but I gotta run and get the dishes done while I still have time.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The Spirit of Youth
The process of maturing is an art to be learned, an effort to be sustained. By the age of fifty you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth. ~Marya Mannes, More in Anger, 1958
A week in from my 50th birthday, a little more, and so far the effort to be sustained, the determination to start on a new path, has held sway. The art, however, may have to wait a bit. My goal for this week was simple: get up early every day and walk. No excuses. Every day. Don't have to set any records, it's not a race, just get out of bed and walk. My body resisted with a litany of complaints, my mind mumbled sleepy objections, but the spirit rose up and prevailed, and I walked. Every day.
I remember that spirit. It's something I treasure most from my youth, when I threw myself at every challenge I could dream up, and then some. The harder the task, the better I liked it. But somewhere along the way, that spirit dwindled, or perhaps it changed into something else that I did not quite recognize, like long hours sitting at a desk. It's as if the daily drudgery of responsible life eventually tatters the sails of hopes and dreams, and leaves you drifting, resigned, on whatever current meanders by.
Therein lies the real challenge I'm facing. The walking is nothing, really. I can walk. I could go out tomorrow and walk all day if I had the time. It's the desire, the rekindling of the youthful spirit, that I'm after. I want to want to see how far I can go, how high I can climb, how fast I can run. I want to want to see how much I can read, how quick I can solve, how fast I can learn. I want to want - want to really live - again.
A week in from my 50th birthday, a little more, and so far the effort to be sustained, the determination to start on a new path, has held sway. The art, however, may have to wait a bit. My goal for this week was simple: get up early every day and walk. No excuses. Every day. Don't have to set any records, it's not a race, just get out of bed and walk. My body resisted with a litany of complaints, my mind mumbled sleepy objections, but the spirit rose up and prevailed, and I walked. Every day.
I remember that spirit. It's something I treasure most from my youth, when I threw myself at every challenge I could dream up, and then some. The harder the task, the better I liked it. But somewhere along the way, that spirit dwindled, or perhaps it changed into something else that I did not quite recognize, like long hours sitting at a desk. It's as if the daily drudgery of responsible life eventually tatters the sails of hopes and dreams, and leaves you drifting, resigned, on whatever current meanders by.
Therein lies the real challenge I'm facing. The walking is nothing, really. I can walk. I could go out tomorrow and walk all day if I had the time. It's the desire, the rekindling of the youthful spirit, that I'm after. I want to want to see how far I can go, how high I can climb, how fast I can run. I want to want to see how much I can read, how quick I can solve, how fast I can learn. I want to want - want to really live - again.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Confidence in Me
Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age. ~Victor Hugo
The big day has arrived, five decades in the making, and with it, my determination to set out on the right foot for the rest of the journey. Doesn't seem so much like a birthday as more of a giant New Year's day, with all the attendant resolutions. But these I intend to actually keep.
The first order of business is physical health. There was a time - and it wasn't that long ago - that I took this for granted. Exercise came easy and often, and I could bend, fold, spindle and mutilate myself in any way without any significant repercussions. The speed at which this situation changed was nothing short of shocking. One week I'm jogging, the next I'm barely able to negotiate stairs on knees that seemed ready to implode. One week I'm squinting a little to see the computer screen, the next I'm fumbling around with glasses for the first time.
The list goes on, sadly, and it began to wear on me. Various random attempts to curtail the slide seemed to do more harm than good, and I soon found myself caught in a self-imposed (that's hard to admit) cycle of excuses and exhaustion and bad habits and general malaise. The discipline required, I could no longer muster.
Ok, I say, this is no time to panic. There are grown men almost my age who are playing professional sports. Yes, they have sultry cheerleaders and whirlpools and cortisone to spur them on, but still, it seems like I should at least be able to tackle the stairs without any sort of mechanical lifting device or oxygen tanks involved. And if I could button my britches without sucking in a breath, that would be a plus.
I browse the web, reviewing all my options for health-club memberships, and in the end, decide the solution is a spreadsheet. Way cheaper. I plot my strategy, assigning points for all the positive things I do during any given day, and convince my wife to make room in the budget so I can cash in these chips for some tangible reward. According to my calculations, a perfect score could earn me $730 in no-questions-asked mad money after one year. Figuring in the occasional beer(s), pizza, and exercise time spent surfing for crucial information like the current weather conditions in Antarctica, $100 might be a reasonable goal. Slow and steady and persistent, I tell myself, that's the key. It's not a destination, it's a journey.
Day 1, I must say, was a rousing success. Meaning I was able to rouse myself from the bed at some ridiculous hour and walk at a brisk pace, urged on by the sound of music - specifically, The Sound of Music. Back in the day it was Deep Purple booming in the high school weight room that did the trick, but now some crooning nuns are sufficient to keep me going, and when Julie belts out that she has Confidence in Me!... well I do too.
The big day has arrived, five decades in the making, and with it, my determination to set out on the right foot for the rest of the journey. Doesn't seem so much like a birthday as more of a giant New Year's day, with all the attendant resolutions. But these I intend to actually keep.
The first order of business is physical health. There was a time - and it wasn't that long ago - that I took this for granted. Exercise came easy and often, and I could bend, fold, spindle and mutilate myself in any way without any significant repercussions. The speed at which this situation changed was nothing short of shocking. One week I'm jogging, the next I'm barely able to negotiate stairs on knees that seemed ready to implode. One week I'm squinting a little to see the computer screen, the next I'm fumbling around with glasses for the first time.
The list goes on, sadly, and it began to wear on me. Various random attempts to curtail the slide seemed to do more harm than good, and I soon found myself caught in a self-imposed (that's hard to admit) cycle of excuses and exhaustion and bad habits and general malaise. The discipline required, I could no longer muster.
Ok, I say, this is no time to panic. There are grown men almost my age who are playing professional sports. Yes, they have sultry cheerleaders and whirlpools and cortisone to spur them on, but still, it seems like I should at least be able to tackle the stairs without any sort of mechanical lifting device or oxygen tanks involved. And if I could button my britches without sucking in a breath, that would be a plus.
I browse the web, reviewing all my options for health-club memberships, and in the end, decide the solution is a spreadsheet. Way cheaper. I plot my strategy, assigning points for all the positive things I do during any given day, and convince my wife to make room in the budget so I can cash in these chips for some tangible reward. According to my calculations, a perfect score could earn me $730 in no-questions-asked mad money after one year. Figuring in the occasional beer(s), pizza, and exercise time spent surfing for crucial information like the current weather conditions in Antarctica, $100 might be a reasonable goal. Slow and steady and persistent, I tell myself, that's the key. It's not a destination, it's a journey.
Day 1, I must say, was a rousing success. Meaning I was able to rouse myself from the bed at some ridiculous hour and walk at a brisk pace, urged on by the sound of music - specifically, The Sound of Music. Back in the day it was Deep Purple booming in the high school weight room that did the trick, but now some crooning nuns are sufficient to keep me going, and when Julie belts out that she has Confidence in Me!... well I do too.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Two Days from Base Camp
In two days, I will be fifty years old. You might assume that this event - which arbitrarily seems to carry the mathematical heft of Avagadro's number or the speed of light or some other constant I can no longer remember - is freaking me out. You might be right.
So, I decided to do something. I'm a man of action. Granted, increasingly slow action, but action nonetheless. Plan A was to come up with an analogy or slogan to cling to... you know, like "50 is the new 20" or "Life begins at 50" or something like that. Something to emblazon on a t-shirt, that might get me to walk an extra block when the dog needs to go out, get me motivated to take up new hobbies, save the planet, embarrass my teenage sons, or at least get the dishes washed.
In my youth (ahem), I climbed mountains back home in Colorado. The first part of the climb was always jaunty and invigorating and full of promise, but eventually you would begin to face increasingly difficult terrain, your legs would start to burn, your breath would become increasingly short. Near the top it would become a single-minded struggle to merely put one foot in front of the other. But I never turned back. And now, when I look back on those days, it is the stark beauty of the alpine that I remember and treasure, the grand vistas, and the tremendous sense of peace and accomplishment that greets you at the summit. The second half is tougher, but it's well worth it.
So, there's my analogy, and I'm sticking to it. I've just reached timberline, and the deep forests and babbling streams of youth are quickly receding below. Who knows where this blog will go, or whether I can even devote any time at all, but my intent is to follow myself through these times, looking back some, looking ahead some, but mostly reminding myself to take my eyes off the trail and just look, period.
But first things first. I'm seriously out of breath already, which doesn't bode well, and I've been gorging on way too much trail mix over last few legs of the journey. Time to regroup and get serious about this assault on the summit.
See ya... gotta run... the dog needs a walk.
So, I decided to do something. I'm a man of action. Granted, increasingly slow action, but action nonetheless. Plan A was to come up with an analogy or slogan to cling to... you know, like "50 is the new 20" or "Life begins at 50" or something like that. Something to emblazon on a t-shirt, that might get me to walk an extra block when the dog needs to go out, get me motivated to take up new hobbies, save the planet, embarrass my teenage sons, or at least get the dishes washed.
In my youth (ahem), I climbed mountains back home in Colorado. The first part of the climb was always jaunty and invigorating and full of promise, but eventually you would begin to face increasingly difficult terrain, your legs would start to burn, your breath would become increasingly short. Near the top it would become a single-minded struggle to merely put one foot in front of the other. But I never turned back. And now, when I look back on those days, it is the stark beauty of the alpine that I remember and treasure, the grand vistas, and the tremendous sense of peace and accomplishment that greets you at the summit. The second half is tougher, but it's well worth it.
So, there's my analogy, and I'm sticking to it. I've just reached timberline, and the deep forests and babbling streams of youth are quickly receding below. Who knows where this blog will go, or whether I can even devote any time at all, but my intent is to follow myself through these times, looking back some, looking ahead some, but mostly reminding myself to take my eyes off the trail and just look, period.
But first things first. I'm seriously out of breath already, which doesn't bode well, and I've been gorging on way too much trail mix over last few legs of the journey. Time to regroup and get serious about this assault on the summit.
See ya... gotta run... the dog needs a walk.
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