Upon further reflection...

Old age ain't no place for sissies.  ~Bette Davis

As I was sweating on the treadmill this morning, agonizing over having the metabolism of a walrus and wishing I had eschewed the doctrine of The Beatles and been more a fan of Jack LaLanne, I had the thought that there are two irrefutable truths in our lives on this earth… we either die young or grow old. Assuming the majority of people choose growing old over dying young, you would think that, during our younger years, we would work a little harder at protecting the one, irreplaceable vessel we are given. Instead, most of us reach the point of now or never... either/or… do or die… usually predicted from the mouth of a doctor who is half our age. That's when the oh, so ugly truth of the many, many lies we have fostered from our youth come to light. The thought process is something along the lines of, "What? I'm mortal? Wait, I wasn't supposed to get past 30, much less make it to 60. What the hell happened?" That's the moment you realize your parents lived very long lives, and you start cursing your gene pool. 

So, we are faced with a dilemma. Do we run the risk of gradual decrepitude with the possibility of ending our days in a nursing home with drool coming out of the left side of our mouths? Or, do we  suck it up and start paying the debt of the countless Big Macs with fries, the mindset that grain and hops are vegetables, even in a fermented liquid state, and cruising the malls constituted exercise? 

Simple fact: There is no such thing as too late. That's why they invented death.

Satchel Paige, who was the oldest rookie to play Major League Baseball and played his last professional game at the age of 60, wrote a book, titled "Maybe I'll Pitch Forever," and in it asked a very profound question: How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were? Somedays, I'm startled by a wrinkled face that greets me in the mirror and belies how I feel. Other days, I feel every minute of my 59 years. I know which feeling I prefer. Time to suck it up.

So, I will sweat it out on the treadmill, feel the soreness of the day-after weight training, push myself in aerobics class, feel the burn of yoga. It's not about living longer. It's about leaving this world with a mind and body as healthy as I can make it between now and then and, occasionally, wishing I had known just how much life was like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.