SNAP, CRACKLE, POP: WAKING UP OLD AND MOBILE

Fight waking up old by not moving?

Oh those magic moment between sleep and awake.

You could be any age at any place and be a vital force.

So you don’t move to enjoy the moment as long as it lasts.

Then you swing out of bed. Your back cracks.

Take a step and your hip pops.

Your knee snaps when you put weight on it.

You feel in that moment you were better off not moving at all?

Explain that to someone who can’t move by themselves.

A forty year old laments not being twenty.

A sixty year old remembers their golden years of forty.

An eighty year old sees sixty in the rear view mirror and can’t imagine ever being that young.

Baby boomers still have time to get a few things right.

From knee replacement, hip replacement, physical therapy, weight training, to the sort of limitations that make you wonder if life is worth living, consider your age.

At some point, sooner than later, you won’t feel singled out when someone holds the door you used to hold.

Just walk through and say, “Thank you.”

No one is calling you old and weak, just showing good manners.

When you get advice to move, to walk, to stretch, the talker isn’t accusing you of not moving, not walking, not stretching.

They’re not asking you to explain why you don’t have time for those elusive fifteen minutes of You Time, or to feel silly because it’s only fifteen minutes.

Looking after yourself during a lifetime of looking after others isn’t stealing your identity as a Giver.

In those fifteen minutes, half hour, you’re just giving to yourself.

Same contribution to mankind, which you’re a part of.

Part of waking up old is worry?

How can the world spin on it’s own if you’re not worrying about everything?

Life means giving one hundred percent one hundred percent of the time?

No, that’s what early burnout means.

Some things work themselves out without you, and that’s not a cut at your importance, just a fact of life.

The sun will rise and set without you worrying.

Air and water will flow and blow regardless of how you feel about it.

But what to do if you can’t turn of the worry with waking up old?

Waking up old means doing less?

Move less today and you’ll move less tomorrow.

Move more today and you may not feel like moving more tomorrow.

The difference between the two is movement.

One step, two steps, three steps four, take as many as you need to get out the door.

If walking is too hard without pain pills, without liquid oxy, without other opioids to smooth the way, find alternatives.

A swimming pool? Floating in a pool is weightlessness at it’s best. You don’t need to rocket into outer space to enjoy the effect. Inner space works, too.

Just because you’re in your sixties doesn’t mean you should resent the ninety year old marathoners, the ninety one year old setting age group records in the hundred yard dash.

Some of the super aged athletes are like the 100 year old who smokes a pack a day along with toddy of whiskey.

Both are freaks of nature more than role models.

The real role models are your family and friends, not people in the news.

Life is not a game of going one up on your loved ones, but why not make it part of the deal?

As long as you remain humble and kind, and give credit to those you out-do, not one up, they will see you as their new role model.

Keep moving for the sake of movement over a period of time and you change your mind and body.

Isn’t that the real goal?

You’ve heard it said, “The only thing you can count on is change.”

You change, they change, the world changes, why not strive for a positive change to balance things out?

On this Easter Sunday 2017, why not rise to the occasion?

Waking up old means waking up old enough to feel the power you possess.