So Beautiful or So What

Tuesday evening of his past week I slipped on the floor at Domino's. I got up, shook myself off and went about my evening at work. The trouble is that my body is not 25 any more, and doesn't bounce back the way it used to. Wednesday more I was a little sore. I went to work and soldiered on, but with some pain. Come Thursday morning I was driving down the hill to work, I was having trouble breathing, and every thing in my body, inside and out was hurting. I was sure I had internal bleeding, and was going o die. So I did what anyone would do, I called off from work and went straight...to mom and dad's. I spent most of the day dozing with their puppy, who also has been feeling sick. I drank lots of liquids, and began to feel better. I realized my body was just telling me to rest and let i heal a bit... and reminding me that water consumption is important in winter as well as summer.

I tell you this story because it brought to mind one of the things I find unfair about aging. The body falls apart sooner than the mind. Inside my had I AM still 25. I have 100 plans of what I want to do, what I want to accomplish, and as each day goes by my body less and less feels like it can do even a fraction of them. Plus of course there ae so many obligations that demand my attention, so that my dreams and ambitions must sometimes hold off in the face of glaring reality. There are orthodontists to pay before I update to a faster computer. There are new school clothes that must be bought before I sit down to read a good book.

I always felt I could do something, could make a mark on the world before my life sped by. Now I look around and realize that maybe my mark will be to leave a legacy of being a good loving father to my three brilliant wonderful kids. Who cares if the whole world can't see my mark. It is a mark that hopefully my kids can see. Another sign of getting old is when you write a blog and it totally strays from where you started, which has happened here.

Getting old isn't fun, or easy, but it happens. I'm going to close with a quote from Paul Simon's 2011 release So Beautiful or So What? --

I’m going to tell my kids a bedtime story
A play without a plot
Will it have a happy ending?
Maybe yeah, maybe not
I tell them life is what you make of it
So beautiful or so what