Working Hard At Fifty-Two

working hardI have been meaning to write about the realities of aging for the last couple of weeks. Strange changes are happening, which actually ten years ago, starting with the need for reading glasses the day I turned forty.

That post will come but I’ll take a different approach this morning. Yesterday I had to help a friend move some boxes from a fifth floor walk-up: Heavy boxes down five flights in multiple trips.

It felt great. By the end I had a good sweat going, my legs we feeling it and I was thinking about the good night’s sleep I would get last night (which didn’t work out but what can you do?).

I hadn’t worked that hard in a long while and it felt great. The question I had an hour later was how long would I be able to do this? At sixty-two will I still be working hard and running up that last flight with as much energy as the first. What about at 72?

The changes I mentioned at the top, which I will get back to, don’t involve stamina and endurance. But won’t those start to go as well?

The aftermath of the work I did yesterday was a feeling of deep satisfaction that the effort I have put in for the last twenty years (as lazy as it has been in many ways) has paid off and I have body that I believe can handle some of the ravages of time.

But not all, and that is a very humbling feeling.

***