aging Archives - The Aging Artist

Coming to Terms

The Call

When the phone rang, my wife answered. She rushed to my studio and said “It’s the urologist”.

“The biopsy analyses have shown you have non-aggresive prostate cancer. The bone scan and MRI show no evidence of spread beyond the prostate. The prognosis for recovery is good.”

The uncertainty is over. The facts are known. Disfunction at the cellular level needs attention. Illness and disease is upon me and in me. This diagnosis is better than I had imagined. I am relieved the cancer is treatable.

Choices

A week after the phone call, I met with a specialist who offered a choice of treatments, starting in a few months. Both treatments have serious side effects. Removing the prostate risks incontinence and loss of libido. Radiation and hormone therapy imply loss of energy, vitality, and libido. While my cancer is non-aggressive the treatments may be necessary to prevent the growth of any aggressive cells.

The likelihood of prostate cancer increases as men get older. It is a hazard of aging. Some articles offer a condescending assessment of this situation:

Because prostate cancer often grows very slowly, older people are often more likely to die of other causes before it becomes a threat. In such cases, treatment may do more harm than good because of potential side effects, such as erection problems and incontinence. And the older you are, the more likely you are to have other medical problems, which can make surgery, for example, more risky.

If you’re at higher risk of dying from something other than prostate cancer, … the goal is to keep you comfortable and increase your quality of life, rather than to try to stop the disease itself.
Web MD

While this passage may have good intentions, I find no comfort or reassurance. If I am unhealthy and old, I will be ‘set out to pasture’. If I am healthy with a chance to live long, I wil face invasive life-altering treatments. It’s a no-win choice.

I am at a fork in the road with both paths leading to difficulty.

How do I decide? I feel like a gambler at a Vegas Casino putting my life savings on one bet. What are the odds I win? What are the odds that I lose?

“If you come to a fork in the road, take it!”

Yogi Berra

Loss and Sadness

Honestly I am unsure how I am right now. I feel strong emotions. My outlook changes day to day and hour by hour. Sometimes I am sanguine and detached- observing my life from afar. Sometimes I feel upset, angry and in denial of my situation.

I feel the loss of carefree living. I am preoccupied with my health. I fear the loss of vitality during treatment. I fear becoming dependent on loved ones for help and reassurance. Old age looms and thoughts of death arise. It is testing my character and my beliefs.

I want to rise above these volatile feelings and offer a wise and inspiring outlook for this blog post. That would be dishonest.

I don’t feel like a ‘kindly old man’ that someone once called me. I am rejecting a passive ‘ho hum’ response to my choices. I seek genuine emotion. An easy life is not my goal.

Feisty!

I am still a hockey player, a soccer player, an artist, a husband, a father- and a boyish kid sometimes. I am stil curious, loving and emotional. I am not set in my ways. I am adaptable. Most of all

“I am not dead!- yet.”

I am not ready to pack it in and let my life run slowly to nothing.

My mother lived to her 101st year. She was determined to be as independent as possible and resisted giving up living her way. My brother said she was ‘feisty to the end’ in his eulogy. I want to be feisty too.

The Way Ahead

I am not at a fork in the road. While I might have to choose radiation or surgery, I am free to decide many things. I can be passive or proactive. I can be optimistic or skeptical. I can be curious. I can be inspired by new experiences. I can find beauty and purpose in unexpected outcomes.

I am transforming from one state of being to another. Rather than fear this new state, maybe I can accept a life based on spirituality, contemplation, and health.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.“

Marie Curie

I don’t want to lose the wonder of the world I felt at the beginning of my life. I need to be here and now in the present. Let tomorrow, and tomorrow after tomorrow be whatever life offers. I must come to terms with my personal encounter with life and death.

Acknowledgment

I am far from the first to deal with this infirmity. Many have survived life-threatening diseases and calamity. I feel inadequate by comparison.

I am joining the countless people on the path of healing and recovery. I can draw from their courage and experience to be optimistic and reassured.

I want to acknowledge and thank my friends, relations and colleagues, who have offered love and support as I recover.

I am not alone.

Upheaval

Am I Well?

I am experiencing an unexpected health scare.

A month ago I checked my blood pressure. It was high. My doctor recommended blood tests, and one was abnormally high. A specialist who did more tests flagged a possible serious condition.

Life’s Illusions

Now I am undergoing more tests with large machines probing my innermost parts. I face another month waiting for results. So much is uncertain.

“What you don’t know can’t hurt you”. Not true- it’s a foolish idea. Ignorance is no longer bliss.

Facing My Fears

Life is no longer normal. I have abruptly fallen off my path. I feel turmoil. Could the tests show I am healthy? I am clinging to hope. I want to be optimistic, but I am unable to override my worst fears. How bad can it be?

Falling off the path

Life is a mess. My plans and my routines no longer seen meaningful. How can I carry out a normal day? I don’t feel the desire to be creative. Will I recover? Will my creativity return? My thoughts are as chaotic as my paint palette. Can I accept an uncertain future?

Reflection and Gratitude

What can I do with all this turmoil ? If I step back from panic and take a meditative outlook, I may find perspective.

The truth is that something might be wrong within me. I am unaware of what that is. The machines will discover the truth. I will have to face that reality and adjust my life. This may be hard to do. Once I accept what is true, the path to recovery can begin.

I am grateful to have a companion who is willing to share this journey. That I am not facing this alone brings great comfort. I so appreciate her acts of care and love.

Aging and health concerns are universal. Friends and relations have shared their difficult health experiences. They offer reassurance that remediation is likely and effective.

Dependency

Life depends on a deep inner world and an complex outer world.

My conscious mind is just a small part of my being. While I might control my thoughts and emotions, I have no direct control of the billions of cells that form my body and make me a living entity. How my organs synchronize to provide energy and health are beyond my comprehension. I have to trust in mysterious life forces to keep me alive and sentient.

I depend on the society and infrastructure around me. The synchronicity of these systems operate for my benefit. I am grateful to live when science and medicine can understand and cure life-threatening diseases and disorders. I am grateful for the competent medical professionals that heal the sick and ailing. I am grateful to live in a country where medical care is a universal service.

Embrace the Unknown

Can life go back to be the way it was before?

If anything, this is a wake up call. Life is precious. Life is finite. There are no guarantees. Today is valuable.

Don’t wait for tomorrow to be happy. Laugh and love this moment. Enjoy what I have right now.

I need to embrace the uncertainty of life. Like a painting in process- life has has so much that is undecided and messy, There are unfinished areas and incompletions. There are more hopes than solutions.

If all the answers are known, painting would be dione, and the story would end.

The way a painting begins is often not the way it ends.

There is so much life still ahead. My story continues and evolves. I need to keep doing the things I care about. My quest continues.

“… And so keep alive the incentive to push further, that pain in the soul which drives us beyond ourselves. Whither that I don’t know. That I don’t ask to know.“
Dag Hammarkjold

COVID19

Life Changing Encounter

I had an unpleasant surprise last week. I caught COVID!

In hindsight I shouldn’t have gone to the gym with a scratchy throat. I felt body aches and chills a few hours after my workout. When a fever developed, I went to bed early. Advil reduced the pain through the night. By morning I was really sick, and I tested positive for COVID!

COVID Fear

My deep fear COVID had been building from the beginning of the pandemic three years ago. Despite precautions I had now succumbed.

I tried to keep my mind from worst case scenarios but questions kept coming. Is this the end of good health? Will my life be changed forever by this contagion?

Fighting COVID

I was hopeful that my four vaccine shots would minimize my reaction to the virus. Government medical advice forn recovering from COVID depended on the severity of the symptoms.

I really felt awful: I had a fever, a raw sore throat, a nagging cough, aching muscles and extreme tiredness. I was also delusional: my mind was fixated on solving my unwellness as a complex puzzle. This delusion lasted two days and subsided when the fever and other symptoms diminished.

Recovery and Gratitude

Lots of rest was the cure. I had to surrender to the biological processes within my body to rescue me from COVID My ego and controlling willfulness were of little value in this fight. A loving and attentive spouse also helped my recovery.

I am relieved! As I write this, more than a week after COVID began, I am recovering well. Recent COVID tests were negative. Although tiredness and a dry cough linger, I retained my sense of smell, and I can breathe freely.

COVID Hindsight

Looking back at the past three years, it is hard to comprehend the toll that COVID has had on the economy and society the world over. Almost every family and individual has been affected in some way.

I am grateful for the innumerable efforts of clinicians, researchers, politicians and front line workers who have done so much to understand COVID and to minimize its impact.

Learning from COVID

Could society, government and individuals have handled this pandemic any differently than they did? There are so many opinions, attitudes and judgements on the source, cause, spread, prevention and cure for COVID. The impact and consequences of COVID have jolted humankind out of complacency.

COVID was a new danger that humankind had never faced. Although it was similar to other ravages in the past, its potential to devastate civilization provided critical moral and ethical dilemmas to everyone.

Lifeboats and Survival

Solving COVID is very similar to the ‘lifeboat’ question in ethics. Suppose you are lost at sea in a lifeboat with 50 people. If the boat can only sustain half that number, what is the solution to survival?

Who survives susch harrowing conditions?

Raft of the Medusa, Artist: Theodore Gericault

Some libertarians might say it’s the fittest that should survive and everyone should look out for themselves. Others may save the women and children; others would say ‘everyone or no one’. Some would refuse to decide and let circumstances dictate. Some would just give up and slip overboard. Others would defer to an autocratic leader to make all decisions. All of the choices are terrible and horrific for half of the people.

There is no right answer to the lifeboat dilemma. Some choices are better than others. If survival were based on killing the weaker ones, what mean-spirited selfish society would await the survivors?

After COVID

Similarly, what kind of society do we want to have after COVID is overcome? We often think that the only answer is the one we ourselves believe in. We want our plan! We want to exterminate other options.

For society to flourish we need to allow for differing views. We need a mixture of choices and attitudes to be heard. We need to heed the welfare of the vulnerable and powerless. We need to be responsible for the survival of as many people as possible.

To revisit the COVID history for lessons learned, we need to be cautious. People were making the best choices they could under difficult circumstances. I am glad that I was not required to make the hard choices for quarantines, masking and vaccination rule.

While I desire freedom to live as I want, there will always be limits to that freedom and responsibilities to ensure the health and safety of other citizens. That is what civilized societies do.

Resolving Old Habits

Changing How I Live

It’s 2024 and time for new resolutions. What needs to change?

As I work on this post, I am eating breakfast while I check my phone for emails. Music is playing, as I stretch my sore knee and type another sentence. The day is rushing by as my mind jumps from thought to thought. I won’t feel happy until this post is published. This busyness has a familiar pattern.

Business and Busyness

I have worked hard all my life. When I retired from my science career, I became a full-time art student. After my BFA, I began a career in art.

For a decade I immersed myself in the art business. I built a portfolio, developed a niche, and made lots and lots of paintings. I networked, marketed and sold my art. It was (and is) stressfully satisfying. I have always been busy.

Creating Time

Over the decades I prioritized efficiency and speed to create more time for productivity.

I multitasked everything I could. I planned breakfast when I showered, evaluated traffic when I ate and theorized science as I commuted.

I juggled 3 or 4 activities simultaneously. I would read a book, listen to music, look after the baby, and do yoga.

Multitasking was a carrot for saving time and completing my ‘to do’ list.

I rushed through everything I could. No time to waste! Why walk when you could run? I learned to speed read and paint fast. I crammed my day with frenetic activity.

I set goals, some small, some large, some unattainable. My happiness depended on these markers of success. I delayed any gratification to only the highest outcomes. Pain was part of the gain. Happiness depended on success.

Rushing Roulette

While I was highly productive in reaching goals. I had a problem: my mind was always somewhere else and one step ahead. The destination was my top priority and much was lost in this preoccupation.

The future was my focus, and the present always seemed a distraction and not a place to linger. I regret the moments I never savoured. I didn’t stop to hear my son’s laugh or enjoy my dog’s playfulness. I had been gambling the present for some unreachable future. I still am gambling away the present.

If happiness was the destination, the satisfaction was short lived. As quickly as one goal was attained, new ones were set. The train headed for a new destination before I could appreciate where I was. I was always on my way to somewhere else.

Limited

I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches
holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the
diners and sleepers shall pass into ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he going and he answers: “Omaha.”
Carl Sandburg

Getting Off the Train

I realize I have been on the express train to Omaha most of my adult life. I don’t want to take that train anymore. I look out the window and see life flashing past as a blur as I wait for Omaha to come into view. Then what?

Something big is missing. Satisfaction or contentment? It’s time I resolve to change how I live.

“… To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we’re gliding down the highway
When in fact we’re slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away”

Paul Simon- Slip Sliden Away

Resolving to Change

I have made my happiness and satisfaction depend on future destinations. Getting off the express train doesn’t mean my journey is over. I need to change my concept of living. I no longer need to be so efficient or accomplished. I want to find a slower heartfelt trail- where I can smell the honeysuckle.

I want unstructured time. I want curiosity without regard to commercial sales. I want to paint portraits, carve wood, and make coloured glass bottles. I want to mess around.

I need to change my lifelong habits of rushing and multi-tasking my life.

Can I make the present more important than the future? Is it the journey itself that counts?

I have been telling myself “I will be happy when I get there’.

Maybe I need to say ‘I can be happy while I am getting there.”

I need to find out.

I am being driven forward into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper and the air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal stirs the strings of expectation.
Still the question- Shall I ever get there?
There, where life resounds,
A clear pure note
In the silence

Dag Hammarskjold

Young at Heart

“Its not how old you are, its how you are old.”
― Jules Renard

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/224285.Jules_Renard

Age is Only a Number

Several readers reponded to my post “Time Out”. They revealed to me that they feel much younger than their biological age. I agree.

As we get older we often get preoccupied by the health of our physical bodies and lament that we can no longer run long distances or party all night long. We forget about the parts that aren’t aging.

Portrayals Beyond Middle Age

We can also feel old because the culture tells us that old means old. Look at the way older people are portrayed in books and media. Old fictional characters are usually parents or grandparents; they connote wisdom, caution, and prudence. They are usually not the central characters and are incidental to the main story. There are numerous scenes on the travails of aging.

The worst portayals are for the very old. How many stories and tales have we read where the villain is the old crone, the old miser, the hag, the codger? Old people are described as ancient relics, who are dilapitated, feeble, senile, wizened, grumpy, and crotchety.

https://curioushistorian.com/legendary-grannies-hags-in-celtic-myths

https://www.twinkl.ca/illustration/witch-pointing-mobile-arm-fairytale-hansel-gretel-person-old-crone-mps-ks2

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/128423026844891576/

Downhill Slide

Our culture seems to suggest life is a long letdown beyond middle age. Retiree’s are past their prime, put out to pasture, irrelevant and unproductive. Old people are expendable or superfluous in many analyses. Economists seem concerned that the aging population is a huge burden on society and the economy.

Mental Age

Old people may be retired, but they are not irrelevant or out to pasture. They are not crones and codgers!

What’s the lesson here? For myself I don’t see myself as being old. Parts of me still feel like I was 20, 30 or 40 years ago. My personality hasn’t changed too much. I can still be silly, impulsive, adventurous, or witty. I sometimes am a goof or a joker! I proudly say I still have an immaturity that doesn’t seem to go away.

Innate Personality

Probably most of our personality traits were imprinted by our DNA, and were present since birth. There are parts of us we cannot change and probably don’t want to change. Our spirit and soul are built around these fundamental traits. Our spirit is full of life energy. When we feel our true selves, we feel young at heart. I imagine this spark will glow until the very end.

Benefits of Age

Being old can be freedom to be who we really are. Lifelong challenges of parenting and career often meant sacrificing our own needs. Now we have an opportunity to explore other parts of our personality. We can relax. We can do things for the fun of it.

A New Childhood

Children have no standards for playing tag, making mud pies, or drawing with crayons. We can do things badly as long as we enjoy it. Let’s have some fun! Let’s share our humour and provoke creative inspiration. Let’s re-create our childhood enjoyment of playtime.

If we allow it, the lawyer can become a chef, possibly a novice but happy chef. The bricklayer can be a sculptor, the nurse an artist, the executive a musician, the truck driver a cyclist.

Do you see the old or young person inside?

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” ― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

When we meet our friends and colleagues, let’s overlook the signs of aging. Beneath the physical exterior shines a wonderful youthful spirit!

Image from1888 German postcard, later adapted by William Ely Hill, who published it in a humor magazine in 1915

Humour

“God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.”

“I feel like my body has gotten out of shape, so I joined a fitness club. I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But by the time I got my leotards on, the class was already over.”

https://www.scarymommy.com/jokes-seniors

https://www.rd.com/list/old-age-cartoons/