Stuff That I Have Noticed #16 – Aging

I’ve never bought the idea of aging.

Obviously, unless one dies young, we all do it. However I have always opposed the attitude of being “old”. Physically it is an undeniable fact but mentally and attitudinally it’s not at all necessary.

I walk around and inside I’m that forty-ish stud …

Author Ben Bryant on AZ Mountain location

… then I pass a mirror.

Bryant is pictured in the studio on February 3, 2016. (Annie Wermiel/NY Post)

Who is that codger? Holy Shit! It’s me. Even the hat is not quite as cool.

Now I am doing the physical part but I refuse to give in to either the mental or the attitudinal part.

So how does one combat these physical and mental declines?

Even assuming good health what you can do about the physical is both limited and obvious. Eat well, stay active, all that kind of stuff.

No longer having an office to go to I don’t ride my bike five days a week, more like two or three (which admittedly is insufficient) but I always take stairs instead of an elevator unless I need to go more than four flights. I’ve never been a gym guy but I live a block from Riverside Park and walk there often. Coming home from the various stores I do curls with the heavy grocery bags as I walk. (One of the best features of living in The City is pedestrian-ism.) Even my rare subway trips involve lots of stairs.

As to the mental aspect of aging, fuggedaboutit. It is (unless one has some form of senile dementia) unnecessary.

In my medically uninformed – yet experientially informed – opinion the mind is like a muscle; use it or lose it. And there are many ways to use it. If you are a creative/artistic person you need no advice from me because we don’t retire. Why would we retire from something we love and are good at?

If you are not of the aforementioned bent then once you retire find something, almost anything, that engages and stimulates your mind/brain. Many folks travel the world. Some seniors sell their house, buy a motor home and get up-close and personal with the USA and our two neighboring countries.

Write a memoir.

It doesn’t need to be for publication. I wrote a 307,000 word, three volume, autobiography just to write it. The process spanned three years and I truly loved the experience. I did publish and am selling it but that was not why I wrote it. The experience itself was the reward and in many ways it served as a sort of self therapy. The process stimulated my mind and my memory in ways I’d never imagined. This is something anyone can do.

An excerpt from the author preface to volume II, Circumstances Beyond My Control:
In the writing of my life story I’ve come to some realizations and observations about the process of actively remembering that I’d like to share. … As I delve into long-ignored and seemingly forgotten mental files I recall a surprising number of details. This discovery has prompted two ideas.

Firstly: the process itself is stimulative as though one were exercising an unused muscle and finding a renewed strength therein.

Secondly: I’ve discovered two phenomena I’ll call “memory clutter” and “memory erosion”.

Have you ever noticed that older people can often recall details of events that occurred forty or fifty years ago but can’t remember what happened last year? This can be explained by the combining of these two concepts. Recent events are cluttered with irrelevancies that can block the salient detail one seeks to recall. The farther back in one’s memory one travels the more of those irrelevancies have eroded leaving the peaks and valleys of one’s important events clearly visible to the mind’s eye.

Someone wiser than I may have expounded these concepts before but if so, I missed them. And maybe I’ve been blessed with an original idea. Who knows? If you do know, tell me.

But I digress.

Read the classics.

I recently read Moby Dick (for the second or third time) and Huckleberry Finn (for the third or fourth). Read A Tale of Two Cities or any Dickens. Vonnegut, Dan Jenkins, Tom Robbins, Christopher Moore: these guys will make you laugh and think at the same time. There is a wealth of choices, literature that will make you wonder, illuminate historical periods, take you to places where you’ll never go and engage your emotions. This and music which does something unknowable to the mind. (I recommend the classics, especially Mozart and Bach, Kenton and W. Herman.) And don’t “listen” as mere background music. Sit in your most comfortable place, wear headphones and close your eyes. Immerse yourself in the colors of the sounds, the harmonies and counterpoints that enrich the soul.

Dance.

No headphones, no chair (no other people) crank up the volume and play some Pop. Whatever rings your chime. It’s Frank Zappa’s early Mothers albums that send my body to gyrating, endangering the furniture and working up a sweat.

Enjoy.

“Life is like an amusement park. You don’t go to an amusement park to become a better person. You go to an amusement park to ride the rides.”
― Samantha Standish

There’s no reason to maintain health and vitality if you’re not having a good time. If you simply open your awareness to the world surrounding you, wherever you find yourself, you will discover that you’re encompassed in beauty you never experienced. Sit outdoors at night, close your eyes and listen, you’ll hear beauty you never knew was there.

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Energy is what I believe all of us are. We’re just conscious awareness dancing for itself for no other reason but to stay amused.”
― Jim Carrey

“Learning is not just preparing for life, it is life…”
― Husam Wafaei

Enjoy. Learn. Live!

Addendum: I thought about adding some thoughts about the downside of a long life – the loss of family and friends – but decided to address that in another month’s offering.

My memoir books will be found here.