Bad Boomer's Place

As a leading-age baby boomer, I’ve been around for a while (I’m now 63).  I can remember being in my 20’s and 30’s and thinking that, since science does not really have a real reason why people age, then it must be a mental thing.  People see everything in life getting older and eventually dying, so their sub-conscious causes them to age as well.  So, I decided that I would not do the same – I would stay young!

So, if you want to know how I am doing with that – don’t ask!  However, I do believe that attitude can go a long way in holding off the effects of aging, and maybe even extend your life.  It is difficult to maintain a positive attitude when aging does catch up with you however.  My dad, a stone-cold perfectionist and type A personality, had a massive heart attack when he was 41 years old.  He lost a third of his heart muscle during the attack.  He was diagnosed by an old family doctor with acute gastritis!  He went back to work after two weeks, but never felt the same.  Seven years later, during a physical at work, he found out about the heart attack and the heart damage!  This was when the bypass operation was brand new, and my dad ended up having another kind of operation that did not work.  After that, there was too much scar tissue on his heart to do a bypass.

Strangely enough, my dad lived into his mid-70’s.  He never had the full life he could have had, but he lived.  I do not chalk this up to attitude, unless you want to count stubbornness as a positive attitude.  But, I do think it tells us what the mind and body are capable of doing.  So how about me?  Well, I had heart problems starting when I was 49.  I had an angioplasty when I was 49, and then a bypass at age 55.  However, because of my dad’s condition, I was aware of symptoms and sought help as soon as I had them.  So, I never had a heart attack, and never lost any heart muscle.  That makes me as good as new, specially with the cholesterol control that is available today.

So, I lasted 8 years longer than my dad before running into heart problems.  Maybe this was because of the diet and life-style awareness, but maybe attitude played a part as well.  Heredity can be a bitch, but I do not really have other major health problems, so I consider myself lucky to have caught and solved the main life-threatening inherited condition that I do have.

From the perspective of our minds, our sentience, or whatever it is that makes us able to consider, analyze, and understand life instead of just reacting to it, aging is a strange bird.  It does not matter how wealthy you are, how big & strong you are, or how healthy you are, the great equalizer will eventually catch up with you and you will be just as sick, just as weak, and just as dying as any other human being at the end of life.  We may all be born equal (not really true, of course), but we all die pretty equal as well.

This is part of a poem I wrote many years ago:

You can’t remember your birth

and you cannot conceive your death

You forget the days you’ve had

and wish you had more left

What does vary, of course, is how much time we have.  Setting aside non-natural causes of death for a moment, some of us die sooner, and some die later.  Some of us age and get sick earlier in life and some later.  It is obvious that heredity has something to do with this, but are there other factors as well?  If life is tough, knocks us around more than others, and gives us more misery than others, does this accelerate the process?  Does hardening of the attitude cause hardening of the arteries, or is it the other way around?  Perhaps it is both, and turns into a vicious circle?

How does the indestructibility of youth (mental and physical) slowly morph into the jadedness and physical deterioration of old age?  Maybe the spiritual among us should be asking “why?”  It would be interesting to see, if an old person’s brain could be transferred into a young person’s body, what would be the result?  Would the body age prematurely?  Would the mind and attitude loosen up and become young and indestructible again?  Will we ever know?

BB