My doctor calls reading glasses “cheaters.”
I’m finding that I need my cheaters more and more these days. Even in the swimming pool during my water workouts. When I’m tracking those workouts, the time gets moved up to the corner of the watch face in a small font. Well, small for these eyes.
That’s not my only limitation.
My young nephew once asked me why I walk so slowly.
That’s a hard question to answer because I walk at the pace my body allows. I ruptured my Achilles tendon years ago, and it limits my flexibility. Fast forward to today, and I move even slower due to back problems, so I try to stay out of everybody’s way when I walk.
My fingers often tingle from pinched nerves in my elbows. My thumbs lock up for the same reason. Thankfully, massage therapy and cortisone shots offer relief.
No complaints here, though. Really. I feel blessed to still be active. I meet friends for meals throughout the week and travel once in a while.
I don’t have a twenty-year-old body anymore. In fact, I’ll be sixty this year. These days, I make small negotiations with my body throughout each day that shape how I move, work, rest and serve.
I think about my grandfather a lot these days. He was seventy-two when he passed away from complications of a stroke. He worked with his hands and was always piddling around with something in his workshop.
After his stroke, it had to be difficult for him to slow down. But my strongest memories of him aren’t from the workshop. They’re of him sitting at the kitchen table, at the picnic table in the backyard or in the rocker on his front porch, quietly observing life around him. He listened, watched and offered advice to his children and grandchildren when needed.
Most of us aren’t Jack LaLanne, exercising well into our nineties. But even he eventually had to negotiate with aging and physical limitation.
Maybe that’s the quiet gift of limitation.
The body may slow down, but a person can still offer steadiness, attention, presence and wisdom. Sometimes, the slower people among us notice things the rest of the world rushes past.
