FOR REASONS THAT don’t warrant repeating, I noticed the other day that I’ve been doing this little column for 941 weeks.
So 941 weeks divided by 52 equals 18.09 years. Close enough.
That makes me 18.09 years older than I was when I started this.
It also makes almost all of you 18.09 years older.
So, what do we think about that?
Somewhere along the way, a nice lady whom I don’t know wrote a letter to the editor complimenting the Peninsula Daily News on some of its columnists, and was kind enough to include me on her A List.
She said something like, “… I don’t want to think about the things that Mark Harvey talks about, but I’m glad he makes me think about them.”
That’s not exact, but close enough.
This aging thing is a hard thing to get your head around and there are a lot of good reasons for that, not the least of which is the simple realization that, at some point, we’re going to die.
We’re afraid of what we don’t know, we’re afraid of pain and we’re afraid of leaving loved ones behind — for their sake, as well as our own.
If it helps anything, at some point for most elders they get past that and learn to just savor today and accept what is.
If it doesn’t help anything, I’m sorry: Wait for it.
Another good reason that a lot of us don’t leap at the opportunity to get older (as though we could do anything about it) is loss, which can be any or all of the things that are obvious to all of us: We can lose family, friends, pets, jobs or opportunities.
We can lose loves and lives, earrings and car keys; in the event of dementia, we can even lose our minds.
We also, often, lose physical abilities — strength, agility, speed, flexibility, endurance or … well, you know.
That’s scary stuff.
What many of us secretly want is to have all the physical abilities we had between 18 and 25, but to know what we know now. I get that. Me, too.
Forget about it.
Yes, we can do things that will greatly decrease those losses and keep us rather remarkably active, but are we going to suddenly “rewind” to age 18?
Not on this planet.
And would you really do that, even if you could? Really?
Most of us would fall back to “… but only if I could know what I know now.”
I absolutely get that.
Then some yahoo like me comes along going on and on about help, so what does that remind you of?
Right: You either need it now, somebody you know who reminds you of you needs it or you might need it someday, so you realize I’m not 18 and I’m not going to live forever — gee, thanks for that, Harvey.
I know. Sometimes, I get tired of me, too.
But this is how it works on this planet, like it or not, so at some point we’d better find a way to understand why it works this way.
Now, I’m not about to get into religion, spirituality or philosophy because that’s not what I do.
What I do is listen to what a lot of people have attempted to teach me for a lot of years, including a lot of you for the past 18.09 years, so here’s what I’ve heard: We get older because that’s our job.
The idea is to try to learn something, pass it along and leave a better place than we found.
We don’t have to be on the cutting edge of Twitter or Facebook, though some of us are.
We don’t have to win all the races, lift all the weights, cut all the wood or do all the laundry in one day.
We don’t have to be in the front of the pack, but we do need to the lead the pack — from behind.
We need to be the stragglers who say, “Wait! We’ve already tried that and it didn’t work!” or “No, it won’t be the end of the world.” or “Yes, we can if we just have a little faith and keep putting one foot in front of the other.”
And … “Fear won’t help,” because it won’t.
Fearing one another, hating one another, berating or belittling one another won’t help.
It never has.
But will all those younguns in the front of the pack hear us? Occasionally.
Rarely. But only if we lead by example from behind.
Only if we let go of the fear, the hate, the greed and the jealousy.
Only if we smile, even when we don’t feel like it.
Only if we say, “Yes we can” even when it looks like we can’t.
And only if we remind ourselves — every day — that courage is not the absence of fear.
Only if we do what we can do and quit worrying about what we can’t do because every single one of us can do something, even if it’s only remembering to say “thank you” from a bed that we can’t get out of.
But many of us can do a great deal more if we’re willing and if we’ve learned what we were supposed to learn.
Useless is a self-imposed sentence.
Sometimes we’ll need to cry over what’s lost — what once was or could have been — there are no rules against that.
Besides, what goes on in your mind and your heart is your private business, but what you do?
What do we do?
Now, that’s another matter because it sends a message to others and to the rest of the pack.
It sends a message about who we are and who they can be. That’s our job.
At least, that’s my job.
Somewhere along the way in the past 18.09 years I said, “Aging is not an affliction, it’s an achievement.”
I meant it.
I still do, but no one ever said it would be easy.
And, yes, tears really can be sweet.
So, if you’ve made it to the age that you know what I mean then you know what I mean.
This aging thing is our job and we’re expected to do the best we can, every single day.
Besides, I know what you did when you were 18, because I did it, too, and we’re both lucky to even be alive.
Maybe there’s a reason for that.
________
Mark Harvey is director of Clallam/Jefferson Senior Information & Assistance, which operates through the Olympic Area Agency on Aging. He is also a member of the Community Advocates for Rural Elders partnership. He can be reached at 360-452-3221 (Port Angeles-Sequim), 360-385-2552 (Jefferson County) or 360-374-9496 (West End), or by emailing harvemb@dshs.wa.gov.
