GROWING OLDER WITH A SECOND EMOTION

No one cures aging; growing older is not a disease. Instead of seeing it as a problem to challenge your mental health, flip the idea of growing older into an opportunity:

You are older today than you’ve ever been. What makes it different than yesterday? A week older, a month older, a year older?

What difference does it make on the slow ride of life?

If you ask yourself that question, and come up empty, please continue.

Today, this day, right now, no matter the time zone you live in, or which countries and states border where you live, no matter your age or health status, there is a purpose for you.

The hard part, the part that so many quit on, is deciding a purpose. I’ve talked to people who review their lives and see their purpose defined by social expectations. They live happily until something changes their view of society and their role.

What are social expectations in America, 2020? Wear a mask, wash your hand, keep social distance.

If wearing a mask, washing your hands, and keeping a social distance of six feet disrupts every aspect of your existence, you’ve got a problem and it isn’t covid19, the pandemic, or the neighbor with a two stroke engine on a leaf blower.

Growing Older With Priorities

Who do you talk to about your knee problem, ankle pain, that problem hip, your back, your neck?

There’s three answers: keep it to yourself, talk to a doctor, or use your pain as a calling card to the world.

This is part of the aging spiral, desperately seeking help from every possible source of relief. Doctors don’t understand, family and friends are worn out from hearing about it. What’s next? Who’s next? Chronic pain changes faces from recognizable to what looks like a silent scream of “Heeeellllppppp me.”

At this juncture, there’s two choices on the table for growing older without a high level of chronic pain: Snake Oil, or Alternative Medicine. And yes, there’s a difference between the two.

Snake Oil: With little or no evidence, the snake oil salesman delivers a new a product that speaks to you. Not that you believe their pitch, because you don’t, but after everything else has failed, why not? What have you got to lose?

Alternative Medicine: There is an extremely broad range of treatments here, including snake oil and voodoo, so choose carefully.

How To Find The Right Alternative Medical Provider

Choose the alternative medical provider who asks about your lifestyle, your diet and exercise routine, and your social support system of family and friends.

More than a white coat, blood pressure and pulse check, and a prescription after a fifteen minute visit, look for an alternative health person based in hard science, cause and effect, action and reaction. Biology and Micro-biology sounds right?

The good ones want to know about your gut, your digestion and elimination, your transit time, as a baseline of health. That stuff is screwed up when something else is going the wrong direction.

Your job is to answer honestly. Do that and you’re on your way to a better day, a better tomorrow. Once you gain a little traction, don’t be surprised if others jump on the bandwagon after seeing your results.

One of the best lines I’ve ever heard came from a naturopathic doctor who compared the body to a barrel. We keep filling the barrel up with the essentials and everything else, and it’s balanced. But, sometimes it’s goes out of balance and spills over.

That, they said, is where disease makes a play. I’ll give an example:

The Other Neck Cancer

HPV 16 neck cancer starts as a smoldering fire, waiting to burst into flames. That was my impression after going through the wringer of chemo and radiation.

HPV 16 waited in the shadows for a moment in the spotlight. At the opportune time, it jumped into action. As we humans move down the line of growing older, our immune system weakens.

What would ordinarily be disposed of like the weekend trash turns into a flame thrower. Then you need a bigger flame thrower.

Cancer doctors are not all made out of the same material, and neither are their patients. At the starting line of cancer treatment, one doctor may have a different philosophy than another. I don’t know why they call it philosophy instead of drug pushing.

One doctor can sit in front of you with a straight face and sell their treatment plan of three different varieties of chemo along with a chemo pump to keep a high level of juice. And it sounds so good, you’ll agree.

I heard the talk and got excited. If the doc had said he wanted to jack a chemo spike into my neck right then, I would have agreed. Let’s go, let’s go right now. But an alternative doctor insisted I get a second opinion.

And I did. It was an opinion of one chemo, no pump. It was a protocol updated to the specifics of HPV 16 related cancer, not smoking and drinking related cancer.

Growing Older Second Opinion

My naturopathic wife said the point of life is to love and be loved. That she said it with a happy face encouraged me to believe she feels loved. (Marking my husband scorecard.)

Has anyone made you feel loved recently? Have you made anyone feel loved? If this sounds like a hard question, it is. I’m here to say kindness is an expression of love. Be nice to someone just to keep practice.

If you talk about love, and in return you hear a low beat and some mumbling about snakes and skulls, relax, it’s just their way of joining the conversation.

Bo Diddley know who you love.

I walk 47 miles of barbed wire
I use a cobra snake for a necktie
I got a brand new house on the roadside
Made from rattlesnake hide

I got a brand new chimney made on top
Made out of a human skull
Now come on take a walk with me
And tell me who do you love?

Find someone and tell them, “I love you.”

It’s not that hard because it doesn’t encompass love eternal. No one thinks that. Saying you love someone doesn’t mean you’re promising them a kidney, but if they want to know your blood type, ask why? Say the words.

Let’s try together. On three, two, one:

I love you.

Are you feeling better? Okay, your turn, but don’t leave an “I love you” in comments here. Find a real person, start with your loved one. Give them a smile and say, “I love you.”

If you get one back, it’s their way to second that emotion.

To be sure love lands where it should, quote some Smokey Robinson:

If you feel like lovin’ me
If you got the notion
I second that emotion
So, if you feel like giving me a lifetime of devotion
I second that emotion