Over the Hill and Picking up Speed

I have a rich life that may at different times involve climbing a mountain, trying to get a llama across a creek, having my granddaughter sign my cast, volunteering with the Red Cross, and writing about the latest health information. I stay active, eat right, and avoid mirrors.

To my dismay, one morning I woke up perilously close to Medicare. Yikes! How did this happen? Of course, aging itself didn’t happen suddenly. It’s been chipping away at me for some time now. Physical issues like two bouts of cancer, mornings that too frequently involve un-kinking some part of my body, worries and loss of loved ones; all that is just part of the package that comes with the passing of years.

What doesn’t have to be part of the package is hand-wringing and wallowing. It’s the challenges of life that let us make the most of life—by conscious choice. We can choose to focus on our bounty of joys. We can choose to be people other people want to hang with because we just don’t have time for hand-wringing and wallowing. Each time another challenge sideswipes us, we get to make a choice: keep moving and find the joy, or lie down and wallow in it.

If we choose to keep moving (okay, maybe a brief wallow), we will run into yet another challenge. Same choice—again. The great thing about choice is that no matter how old we get (I’m on a 104-year plan), we get to keep doing it. If there is one lovely thing age brings, it’s a realization of our mortality and the desire to make each day count. People who are fun to be around are people who get it, no matter what their age; people who get that we have this one brief time on earth and choose to live it to the fullest.

Besides choosing to focus on the heartwarming, the poignant, the quirky and sometimes hysterical, I’m convinced that the good life includes staying connected and creating community, making each daily encounter as positive as possible, fighting comfort-zone shrinkage, staying active, embarrassing our children/grandchildren, finding romance in the ordinary, wearing funky tee shirts, and, perhaps, a tattoo—on some part of the anatomy that doesn’t sag.

My job in this column will be to ferret out the upsides of the inevitable and invite you along for the celebration. These will be your stories, too. I invite you to share your laughs or lessons learned about aging and spread the joy. Send your funny experiences and I'll share them in later columns.

Mary Jo is a freelance health writer who finds humor an essential companion on this rollercoaster of life. She gives humorous cancer survivor speeches, teaches Aging with Pizzazz seminars to promote senior activism; and fervently believes if we can get enough people involved, we can get the law of gravity repealed!