Reading harold_maude's journal

I woke up this morning, as I do other mornings and found that pain is usually the first thing that greets me after the alarm.
Since, by nature I tend not to lay in bed after the alarm, I get up and my body is not wanting to do what it used to.
It's somthing that I've been dealing with for a while now and it sucks.

The problem with age is that you have all this great stuff, like skills that take years to aquire, patients, the wisdom not to react so fast, stuff like that, and your body is at the point where it doesn't move as fast as you need it to so that you can do as much as you know you should be able to do, or at least think you should.
It sucks.

It's not fair, and I know that life isn't fair. But the things that require time to learn take so much time that by the time your proficciant at them your body is in the state of massive revolution.
But by this time you are so steeped in all this stuff that you can't quit.
You just go forward. And all the time you know that each day makes you one day older in the process and there is only so much time left before you don't win with getting out of bed so easy.

It's the nature of life here on this planet.

Now don't misunderstand me here. I'm the type of person who wants youth back so that I can do it all over again, or the type of person who is freaked out about getting gray hair or wrinkles or whether gravity has it's way or not. Thoes things to me arn't important. They happen.
But fighting my body is a problem.

I'm comforted by the knowledge that my mother who is 86 this year is still incredibly mobile and up until a few months ago was climbing around on step ladders and into things somewhat like a monkey. Her knees have finally stopped her, and the pain in her body that she has fought for years is finally making her slow down.
She still does lots of the creative things she's done for years, but it just takes more time now than it did before.

If I'm doing that good when I get to be 86 it won't be too bad.

There are times I find myself wishing I could go back to be 19 again, but have all the skills and wisdom time gives you, intact.
It would be nice to have that time again with the focus about things I do now.
I wouldn't want the emotional crap I had back then, just the skills I do now.

But time travel of that kind doesn't happen. At least not in real life. So I'm doing the best I can with what I've got,
and hoping when all is said and done, that I will be able to not have any regrets about my life.

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.