Cup of Joe

At 50 years old I am blessed with relative good health, although my physical abilities aren’t what they used to be.  Most of my friends have noticed their mental and physical acuities to be declining just a bit as well.  I know this because some of them tell me about their challenges with aging every time I see them.

When I was in my 30’s, I would regularly have dinner with my friend, Alex.  We would discuss life, family, and business.  We would always start the discussion with the typical question, “How are you doing?”

As the years went on, we started noticing that we were spending a bit more time answering each other’s question by talking about how we were physically feeling.  During one of these conversations, I interrupted by laughing about how much time I was taking to answer his question.

He laughed along with me, and we agreed that this could end up a slippery slope in our 40’s and 50’s, and beyond that it could become the only subject we talk about.

That day, we vowed never to spend more than five minutes on the subject again.

In our youth, we get sick and we quickly get well again, for the most part. As we get older, we develop conditions—some of which won’t go away.  We simply have to learn about them, how to best treat them, live with them, and ultimately, get on with our lives. Some would posit that to accept these conditions is akin to accepting an early demise.

As one who accepts death as a part of life, I don’t think this acceptance is giving in at all. Our response to the challenges that ailments, condition, and more broadly, aging, pose to us could ultimately determine the quality of life in our later years. I contend that dealing with our conditions quietly and peacefully will determine how gracefully we age.  And graceful aging is not a bad goal in the second half of one’s life. Remember: accept, adjust and advance.

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You can tell something about where a culture has been and where it is heading by paying attention to its’ popular words and phrases.  Words like parlor and courting are disappearing from our culture, as courtships have become more informal, and while there’s little need to keep a room in the home special for things like births, christenings and wakes.  In fact the funeral parlor is now mostly referred to as the funeral home.

Some terms and phrases change their meaning to go with the times.  The phrase “hold your horses” became much less literal once horse and buggies became things of the past.  Some terms shift with the times.  Long after hi-fi’s (high fidelity record players) were the rage in modern home technology, the term wi-fi comes into our lexicon.  Telephone rings have morphed into ringtones.

My guess is that the newspaper phrase “above the fold,” referring to a story that merits the top half of the front page, and web designers still use to make sure all of the important content on a website is high enough that we don’t need to scroll down, will be a lost reference to kids born in the last five years or so, even though it remains in our lexicon.

Let’s watch what happens to the expression that someone is “all thumbs when it comes to_______.”  What refers to clumsiness or lack of physical skill with something might eventually make no sense in a time where people fly through texts and emails on their Blackberry’s and iPhones using their thumbs to type away. Or perhaps its meaning will shift.

When words and phrases go away, they usually take a part of the time of the culture with them, and we lose part of who we were. This isn’t necessarily good or bad.  Perhaps there is something to be learned about our culture just by noticing as it is happening.