This Body...Not What It Once Was

Again...All time favorite!

Cute kid!

I look in the mirror and think...who is that guy? One of my stops through Mexico last winter was at Lake Chapala in order to spread my dad's ashes. It was his last and most desired home. Anyway, while searching for his old friends I came upon JR. This was my third time meeting JR and being true to form to the previous two he was fairly inebriated. I say this because it took a few moments for him to make the connection of who I was and his response once he remembered was just so...very special..."Man you're old!" I'm pretty thick skinned, so it didn't effect me, but...he really didn't need to repeat this couple more times. Each time was spoken with quite the surprise of just how old I looked. 

What happen to the cute kid :)

I guess the fact is...I am old! My birth certificate and drivers license both agree with me. And the fact that I'm being offered 'Senior Discounts' at a greater frequency brings it that much closer to reality. Though this is my 'Heinz' year, that is 'Heinz 57', when I recall what my grandparents looked like at my age or even a decade younger, I remember some pretty 'old' people, and they were. They were older partly because their life was harder, for a number of reasons, but also because they (and most of their generation) did not quite have the attitude for diet and maintaining physical conditioning. The fact is that they, in all accounts...were older. Yet regardless, this body still finds itself aging no matter how many attempts that I make to slow the process.

USAF Airman Williams

Look at Mr. Jack LaLanne for example, who opened the nation’s first fitness club in 1936 and is considered the "The Godfather of Fitness", he too died at the age of 96 in 2011. They say he died of pneumonia, but the fact is, he was just 'old'. The difference though is found in one of his quotes, "Dying is easy. Living is a pain in the butt. It's like an athletic event. You've got to train for it. You've got to eat right. You've got to exercise." 

PAF& R EMT 2 Williams

What does all this have to do the title, "This Body...Not What it Once Was"? We've been planning for quite some time a trip with some good friends of ours for a 2 1/2 week journey on our motorcycles. Because of an exacerbation of an ongoing illness, they will no longer be able to make the ride. Both couples are equally disappointed, but I tried to assure them that this could have resulted from either one of us. Sure, young or old all have injury and illness, but the fact is that the curve just so exponentially climbs as we age. 

Retirement Pic...

I find myself often getting up from a sitting position much slower these days. And pains...shoulders, knees, feet, thumbs, cramps...ok, let's stop there. You get the point. This body truly is NOT what it once was. I often hear, "Rick you're in such good shape". To a degree that's true. The only problem is that they see the signs, not the symptoms. That is, they see the active part, the external shell. They don't often see me getting out of a chair...Oh, not a pretty sight...and are not able to feel the pain that results simply from standing. Yet, viewing the result of every other living creature before me...they ALL have experienced the same...they have pain, become old and died. Morbid you say! Perhaps so. But Jack is right, "Living IS a pain in the butt"! I just hope that it is a pain that is always worth the living for.

Keeping with my tradition of adding a song in my blog here's the perfect one for 'This Body...Not What it Once Was...

Paul says some remarkable words that enhance what I was attempting to say in this blog…that is: II Corinthians 4:16 “We do not lose heart. Though our outward man is decaying, but the inward man is being renewed day by day.” And in the next chapter he says, "For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee." 

Paul suffered affliction to the point where he said, "death is working in us," yet he did not lose heart - because he knew something --> "...if our earthy house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Good stuff to chew on indeed :)