Rejecting The Trajectory of Aging

One of my absolute, all-time favorite movies is American Beauty. If anyone who reads this hasn't seen the academy award winning film just call me and I can quote it for you to save you the cost of renting it. It is just that good. There is one scene in particular which has grown on me over time. In this scene, the main character is narrating a segment of the film and states "It's a great thing when you realize that you still have the ability to surprise yourself."

I didn't really understand the insight of that sentiment when I heard it. It didn't make my top 10 list of quotable moments from the movie. However, as I have begun to approach the mid-way point in my life I have increasingly found those words a haunting refrain.

There is a natural trajectory to each life; a goal, a dream, a picture of what fantastic adventures await. As time goes by, it seems that our dreams become smaller. We begin to feel that we are running out of time. To save face for ourselves, we couch our retreat in kind ways of expression. We say that our dreams are now "more manageable" but that is just a palatable way of saying that we no longer think we can reach the original ones. The sad reality is that somewhere inside there is a part of us that is giving up a little more every day. I can't do that anymore. I'm too old for that. That's not possible. The downward portion of our trajectory has begun.

Many fight it. Men buy fancy cars or leave their wives. Women go back to college to restart the career they put on hold to raise a family. All while onlookers joke about their rebellion against Father Time using terms like 'mid-life crisis.'

All who know me are aware that over the last six months I have become one of those brainwashed Crossfit people. I have thrown myself into a sport full of heavy weights and high intensity. I have turned a blind eye to my supposed age and looked instead towards a new reality. Many days after a particularly grueling workout, I come home to a handful of Advil and an ice pack. My wife will worry about me and ask "Should you really be lifting that?" and "Is that really safe for someone YOUR age?" Her reaction is a completely understandable one. What she can't see is that behind all the sore muscles and groaning I have never felt more alive.

This weekend I actually competed in my first Crossfit competition. In most Crossfit workouts, there comes a moment when you reach the end of what you think is physically possible. This is the point where the community of Crossfit athletes rallies around you and encourages you to reach further, push harder, and keep going. In a competition, the stakes are higher due to the sheer number of workouts an athlete is asked to do in a single day. Nervous for weeks leading up to the event, I worried that when that moment came I might reach into the tank and find it empty. "It is a great thing when you realize that you still have the ability to surprise yourself." I didn't win the competition this weekend. For someone as competitive as I am that may seem to be a disappointment. Yet I walked away happy to the point of tears with my 22nd place finish. This weekend I actually competed in my first Crossfit competition.

Folks who typically read my blog may be asking themselves "What does this have to do with seniors and aging?" Nothing. And everything.  This weekend I feel as though I captured some water from the fountain of youth. I chose not to surrender to the downhill trajectory that life had already begun to create for me. I chose to live. At Home Instead Senior Care, that spirit is reflected in our mission as well. We are not simply a company that provides help for seniors living at home. We are an organization that dares seniors and their families to ask the question: What's next? We are driven by the desire that when seniors reach the point in their lives when everyone expects them to quit, that they will have not only the resources but also the courage to ask big questions and dream impossible dreams.

Are you saying that seniors should start doing Crossfit?

No, I am not saying that seniors should start doing Crossfit.

But then again...why not?

A Day of Thanksgiving

While much of the activity in our office is already revolving around our Be A Santa To A Senior Program, we have not forgotten Thanksgiving. We are, as a Home Instead Family, grateful for many things this year not the least of which are the opportunities we have had to touch people's lives through service.

While not only celebrated in the United States, I believe that Thanksgiving can be qualified as a uniquely American holiday. It is true that the Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving but most of their tradition didn't become commonplace until settlers from New England began to head northward during the American revolution. In Liberia, Grenada, Norfolk Island and Japan Thanksgiving has its roots in American influence. And we have much to be thankful for.

The Pilgrims are largely credited with establishing the tradition in the New World of giving thanks to God for all that he has done. They began to celebrate in this manner while still in England. They would hold fasts and festivals of thanks in order to praise God for giving them a good harvest or for giving them the strength to survive a plague or difficulty of some type.  It was only fitting that after they fled to the New World in order to have the freedom to worship in the way in which they chose, that they take the first opportunity they had to pay homage to God for blessing and protecting them.

In 1789,  President George Washington proclaimed the first nation-wide thanksgiving celebration in America, "as a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favours of Almighty God." Somehow that last part has gotten lost through the years. We pause to give thanks for all the things that mean the most in our lives but to whom are we giving thanks. I told a friend of mine this morning that I was thankful for his friendship. That is an interesting concept. It presents our friendship as a gift that he has given me for which I am thankful. Grateful that I am, it is not deserving of a feast in his honor. Without an acknowledgement of divine influence, Thanksgiving appears to be a bit of an overkill. I am thankful for a roof over my head and a warm meal but I am not sending cards and flowers to the construction workers and grocers who actually made those physical dreams a reality. Rather I am thankful to God for giving me the abilities to be successful at work and for opening the doors to a work environment which allows me to showcase the talents with which he has enabled me. I believe that God has provided and continues to provide for my family in every way. I am thankful for that providence.

Thanksgiving affords me a great opportunity to tell the people in my life just how thankful I am for them. However, without an understanding of who wove our lives together in oftentimes unimaginable ways the thanks seems misguided at best. For example, I am thankful for the community of people whom I have recently come to know through Crossfit but I will not stop tomorrow to thank myself for joining Crossfit. Like so many other aspects of my life, there were a myriad of things that put that situation together and almost none of them I am able to take sole credit for. Some may chalk all of those those circumstances up to happenstance. Some may say that the "many and signal favours of Almighty God" are in reality nothing more than acts of chance. In that case, this holiday is pure idiocy. There is no reason to thank chance. If chance is truly to credit for all of the gifts that even the least fortunate of us have been given then Thanksgiving is nothing more than a excuse to overeat and watch football. Thanksgiving, like so many other things, makes little sense once God is taken out of it.

As a parent, I am teaching my boys to say "please" and "thank you." I am teaching them that there are two requirements for thanking someone. First, you must know what you are thanking someone for. Second, you must know who you are thanking. Perhaps we would all do well to remember the second part of that lesson this year.

"...Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted." 

Isaiah 12:4

Happy Thanksgiving.