Shawshank Wisdom

It can all start to feel like death by a thousand paper cuts.

Aging.

It happens to the best of us.

With every new trip around the sun, passing day, and next breath, we’re older than the ones before. The process does seem to accelerate though. Injuries that used to heal quickly now take longer to mend. Joints that didn’t hurt yesterday make themselves known today. Checking things out to see what this or that might mean, or not mean, becomes a more common occurrence. One can tire of having to think about, tend to, and tolerate a body that isn’t what it was not so long ago. At least this one does.

However.

Given that getting older is here to stay, there’s a choice to be made about what to do with what we’ve got.

Open our arms wide in acceptance, or shrug our shoulders in resignation.

One is active. The other passive.

To accept is to welcome, receive, and participate in. To resign is to give in, quit, and withdraw from.

Acceptance is about taking life on. Resignation is about letting it go.

Or in the words of Andy Dufresne, “get busy living or get busy dying”.

Test Results

It’s been a long two weeks.

On a Tuesday afternoon my husband had a biopsy. His PSA numbers had risen to the point of raising some concern, and it was time to find out what was going on. His test results, we assumed, would be available by the end of the week.

It was an inaccurate assumption.

Winter weather moved in and life, including communication from the doctor’s office, came to a screeching halt for an additional week. Which gave us more than enough time to wonder just what those test results would have to say. Was it prostate cancer? If so, how aggressive? Would treatment be necessary? If so, what kind? What side effects? The longer we had to wait, the more we wanted to know the results. Until you have the information, it all swirls around in your head. Especially in the wee hours of the morning.

Today, his results came in, and there is no cancer.

Life has a way of reminding us that our days are both precious and precarious.

The precious is found in the here and nowness of our lives.

The precarious on the other side of a door that is not yet open.

No need to push on that door. It will open when the time comes, and not before.

Endorphins

It was really hard work this morning as we made our way up the logging road. It’s a steep1.7 mile uphill climb all the way from where park to the top. Hiking it twice a week, it’s our way of training to get stronger. It’s always hard at the beginning as our bodies adjust to the effort. Some days it gets easier as we make our way to the top, other days not so much. This morning was one of those not-so-fucking-much times. With the end in view, we pushed hard for the last 50 yards or so. I sounded a lot like Roy Kent from Ted Lasso as I growled his favorite word with every step.

Head on the stump at the top, I caught my breath, and then gulped down some water. Looking at my watch, we’d shaved another minute off of our time. No wonder it was hard.

And then it happened.

The flood of those magic endorphins that follow vigorous exercise showed up. These miraculous chemicals trigger a positive feeling in the body and brain. It’s like Ellen Degeneres is doing her happy dance on my inner stage.

The thing about endorphins, from my experience, is that they only show up when I’ve exerted myself to the point of it being hard. To get stronger I have to push myself beyond what is comfortable. But those damn endorphins feel so damn good that it’s worth working that damn hard to have them flood me with their silly goodness.

What is true on the logging road is true in life.

Stretching past my comfort zone is where the magic happens. In every aspect of life, the only way I know to grow and get stronger is to stretch a little more, reach a little higher, dive a litter deeper, and risk a little more.

It may be hard at the time, but it’s totally worth it.