Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Adapting to Aging

When you get to about 35 or 37 you have to be more careful (especially if you are very athletic like I was an am) of pulling muscles especially in your legs and feet. One day you are doing something you likely have done since childhood or your twenties and something goes pop unexpectedly. For example, I was doing what I thought was a relatively easy class 4 rock climbing move at the ocean and many of the muscles tore off the back of my knee, I fell into the ocean and because I could no longer walk at that point I almost drowned in the ocean because I couldn't swim very well either without using my right leg at all which was completely out of commission. I think this was when I began to realize I couldn't always do things I had done before. So, I noticed it mostly in terms of both endurance and muscles not always being there for me like they once were.

Though I was able to sort of heal myself because I am an intuitive healer I learned from a physical therapist that I should have had a 50,000 to 100,000 dollar operation to re-attach the muscles that tore off the back of my knee but I wasn't into going to doctors much at all when this happened and mostly was into exercise and preventative medicine so I didn't have the operation. The physical therapist said that most people who had had this experience would have been crippled the rest of their lives if they weren't a healer like me. As a result my right calf is bigger than my left from the moving muscles that tore lose. But I can still walk around 6 miles or more and run if I have to because I was able to heal myself. He called my injury a 19th Century injury that people often had before muscle reattachment operations were available in the 20th and 21st century.

Later, I noticed at about age 40 to 45 that it was harder to read the really small print on medicines and stuff like that more. So, I bought a plastic card that fit into my wallet for when I couldn't read something. But I was still too proud to wear reading glasses yet. By 45 to 47 I found the little magnifier wasn't good enough anymore so I bought some 1 to 1.5 power glasses at the drug store to magnify what I was reading a little bit. By age 52 I went into Lenscrafters to get a prescription but by that time it made me nauseated to read books anymore because of the difference in the vision between my two eyes. I really don't read books much anymore because of this change in my eyesight which I find sort of sad. But it became a choice between having a splitting headache or getting very nauseated or both. So, I just gave up reading books sort of because of this. But then I discovered Books on CD so my wife and I listen to books being read to us often when we travel or sometimes she reads a good book to me. But, hopefully this won't happen to you as you progress to needing glasses. Luckily, her experience in getting glasses wasn't like mine.

In regard to Blogging I have noticed that a computer screen doesn't give me a headache if it is big enough so I buy laptops like my IMac Pro with a 15 inch screen. And my wife has an old Imac destop with a terabyte of memory or more with an even larger screen than my laptop. So, between these two screens and my Ipad I don't seem to get headaches if the screen is large enough. It is paperback book sizes that give me a headache and make me nauseous

As you age adapting to different things is important. For example, I find I don't do well with some of the more intense movies I used to watch. If it's Iron Man 3 or Thor or Star Trek  or something like that I don't have a problem with it but if it is something real and disturbing I find I don't want to watch that so I don't have bad dreams or other bad consequences from doing that to myself. I'm very grateful to have my life more stabilized now and not going through relationship breakups or divorce because it is quite obvious to me that something like that at this age might be fatal.

So, there is something to be said for stability and security after you are 65.

It is very difficult to watch relationship breakups among people I know now though even worse often is watching people who are all alone around my age or older or even 50 and above.

Though I have presently been married and faithful to the same person since the mid 1990s I can also remember that the loneliest 7 years of my life were the last 7 years of my previous marriage before this one. It never ceases to amaze me how a relationship that was the best one in my life for the first 7 years (from 1980 to 1987) could turn into such a nightmare the next 7 years. However, looking back now I can see it primarily was my father passing on when I was 37, getting Giardia (my wife and 2 of our children in India and Nepal in 1986) and health complications for both of us as a result since then, and 3 of our kids becoming full blown teenagers, and us trying to live a more alternative life style with all the rest of these things going on. Alternative meaning (Honest Business People, Spiritually based and close to the land and much more honest with ourselves and our children than most people tend to be).

So, I guess what I'm saying here is that there are always variables that are going to happen in our lives that no one can predict. I am given often about 1 thing out of every 10 as a precognitive psychic but that still leaves 9 things out of 10 that I find I'm completely unprepared for and often am devastated by along the way just like the rest of you. So, always being adaptable allows a better chance of survival and happiness into old age. This article is about some of the ways I had to adapt to survive from my 30s until now age 65. Good Luck!

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