I have come to the conclusion that aging has never lost a contest. Not one. The score is something like Aging: Several Billion. Humanity: Zero. Yet every morning we get out of bed and insist on a rematch.
This week I take a journey into the reality that “like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”
My mom watched soap operas, and Days of Our Lives was on her hit list. So was The Edge of Night. In college, All My Children had something of a cult following. That opening image of sand slipping through an hourglass stuck in my youthful mind. Heck, I was sitting on top of the sand pile with years and years to go before I sleep.
Yes, recently I have spent a lot more time considering my place on the assembly line of life. Mortality is real, and so is our uniquely human capacity to contemplate our place in it. A bull elk does not sit around pondering which young spike is going to steal his harem and leave him wandering the woods in old age.
I have often found the creation story in Genesis, particularly the eating from the Tree of Knowledge, an apt description of the human condition. We have been given imagination, self-awareness, and free will. Wonderful gifts, but they come with the unsettling ability to contemplate our own mortality.
After my first failed retirement in 2015, I started attending water aerobics classes at the local recreation center. When we moved out here in 2017, I soon discovered the APEX Center, which is the finest public recreation center I have ever seen. I joined the aerobics class and found it enormously helpful. Eventually, I added lap swimming to my dance card and have continued my faithful weekly workouts.
Because of my battle with Long COVID, swimming is truly about all that is left for me in the exercise department. Golf, skiing, biking, hiking, pickleball, and a host of other activities are no longer possible. But I can still bounce around in the water and swim my laps. For that I am grateful.
Over the years, I have made a number of friends while bouncing around in the pool. This week I was visiting with a recently retired probation officer who has been doing a lot of traveling. She had just returned from a two-week jaunt and asked me about my next travel plans.
Here was my answer:
“Right at the end of my one-year, 42,000-mile, three-continent, four-ocean, all-50-states adventure, a little voice said, ‘You are done.’
“I have absolutely no desire to mark another destination off my list. There is no place on this planet I need to visit to feel like I have accomplished something. I can’t say this feeling is permanent, but right now it feels that way.”
She smiled and said, “This past week a friend of mine told me that retirement comes in three phases: ‘Go-Go,’ ‘Slow-Go,’ and ‘No-Go.’”
I laughed and said, “Well, I guess I have graduated to Slow-Go. My travels from here on will probably be road trips to connect with family and friends.”
I have shared before that my 49 years in pastoral ministry have taught me a whole lot about the various phases of life. I have watched some people move through their seventies and eighties with remarkable grace and alacrity. Others have crashed and burned, sometimes because of bad habits, sometimes lousy genes, and sometimes through no fault of their own. Life can be terribly unfair in how it distributes the challenges of aging.
I have also learned that there is a difference between surrendering to aging and accepting its reality. One is giving up. The other is making peace with what is, while continuing to embrace what remains possible.
So now I will proudly wear the label of a “Slow-Goer.”
The point is, I still want to go.
Just not fast or far.
Onward and Upward,
Mark
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