On Getting Older.

By Tom Demerly.

I turn 52 today. I worried about that. Getting old. I decided to stop worrying about it. Instead I decided to worry about not living. I decided to stop looking into the rear view mirror of life and saying, “I remember when I…” instead of saying, “Right now I am…”

I was most worried about not doing things anymore. That scared me about aging. About being too old. Then I decided to stop worrying and just keep doing things. It really is that simple.

There is a physical element to aging. I’ve had three knee surgeries, a broken back, too many broken left arms to remember, a broken right arm and hand, eye surgery; heart surgery, a stroke and I have a cardiac implant. Those things affect me a little, and they are a badge of experience; a life well lived. An active life. So I work around them. And the more I do the less of an issue they are. They are not a reason to stare in the rear view mirror looking at what is behind me. They are a reason to keep moving, keep doing, keep living. Because there is no denying some day something will catch up to me that will have a limiting factor on living. Until then, it’s a race to get as much stuff done as I can. There are people who, at 52, are so much less capable than I am. Actually, there are people at 23 who are.

An embarrassing element of aging is beginning to understand how stupid I was when I was younger. In my thirties I knew everything. It was amazing how smart and successful I was. Good looking too. I was wrong of course, but I thought I was quite impressive at the time. Now I know better. Some of the errors of judgment I made still sting pretty badly. The only thing I can do about those errors is own them and not make them again. Some people say they have no regrets. They must not have taken many chances. I have plenty of regrets. I’ve also taken a lot of chances. That I don’t regret. I still have time to take more. I guess I don’t regret that I have regrets. Is that possible?

The good news about being older is we may be truly smarter. Most of us. I hope. The greatest fear I live with is not learning something from my mistakes. The fear of repeating them. As a result I remind myself of them often. Another risk is being fixated on what I did wrong. Not having the confidence to take on more risk, and do it wisely tempered against what I’ve learned from experience. I suppose that’s called “good judgment”.

One of the lessons I’ve learned is that, like the lyric in the Pearl Jam song, “…that what you fear the most will meet you half way…” failure has a way of finding you if you live your life to avoid it. In the cruelest irony if you navigate life to a warm, comfortable death bed with no regrets, no mistakes then there is a tendency to realize, in your final moments, that you could have done more. That is the cruelest regret. I don’t have that one.