A friend said something a few weeks ago that keeps sticking with me. “If I’m not getting better,” he said, “I’m getting worse.”
As we age, we start feeling more and more like an Earthling in “To Serve Man,” a classic episode of “The Twilight Zone.” Each day, we get a little closer to our last supper.
Now the phrase with the double meaning is “I’ve had a good life,” which sounds even more uplifting than “to serve man.” Unless it means you’ve given up, that life is in the past tense, that all that’s left for you is to plant your butt into the sofa and wait until you dissolve into the landscape.
This can sneak up on people, even if they’re half my age. I remember a friend in her early 30s who decided to divorce her husband. “He got old,” she said. Several years later he died, way too young.
So every now and then, ask yourself a question: What’s my 90-day moving average?
Investors use that to measure stocks. Dwelling on a single day’s gain or loss can make you a little crazy, but if you track how prices have moved over three months, you can see a trend rather than a bunch of blips.
A needle that edges in the wrong direction can ruin a dieter’s day, but it’s a lot less significant than the 90-day moving average. Those with diabetes (or close to it) know about the A1C test, which looks at glucose levels for about 90 days rather than a single moment.
Try that with other aspects of your life. Suppose you’re angry or anxious about the Supreme Court’s stance on abortion. Perfectly understandable. But has your mental health been trending upward? COVID is certainly not gone, but it’s less of a dark cloud than it was in February. If you’re not getting better under some fairly optimistic circumstances, you’re probably getting worse.
Ask yourself why. If you had a major setback, that’s understandable. But what if you didn’t? We all can fall into a funk, but if you’re in one for three months, your lifestyle will smell a little funky.
Are there patterns you can change? Have you gotten lazy about reaching out to friends? Do you spend too much time doomscrolling or interacting with negative people? Do you spend too little time helping others or rewarding yourself? Do you need help?
As we age, nature chimes in with extra challenges: more frailty, less energy, less mental sharpness. Without work or school, meeting people is more of a challenge, and sometimes old friends just get too old — or dissolve into the landscape.
But once you retire, you also have the gift of time, life’s funky-free deodorant. That means more time for exercise, more time for finding relationships, more time for learning, more time for building relationships, more time for kindness and long walks and discovering beauty. More time for building good habits.
In his book “Living, Loving & Learning,” Leo Buscaglia recalls Sunday gatherings as he was growing up, and how his father would ask everyone what they learned that day, then marvel as each fact was presented. Years later, still well before the internet, the now-grown-up Buscaglia would ask himself that question as he went to bed. “And if I can’t answer that question,” he writes, “I have to get up and get the encyclopedia and flip to something and learn something new.”
For those who are channeling their inner Leo Buscaglia, here are two things you can learn to help jumpstart your weekend:
Swans, those beautiful and graceful birds, poop up to six pounds a day.
For those who love crossword puzzles and always get stumped by Greek alphabet questions, here’s a song (which also might be helpful for COVID variants):
Murphy Slaw
Something old: I’ll always have a soft spot for “The Love Boat” because my first two cruises were on the Pacific Princess, the star of the show. I didn’t find lasting love on the trips, but do have lifelong memories of everything from the Great Wall to Ginza, from the Pyramids to Pompeii.
Something new: It’s hard to compete with kids and animals, even if they can’t get their act together.
Something borrowed: This chipmunk is all of us when we first taste something great.
Something blue: If you can read this from The Athletic, it’s worth your time. If not, these two tweets will give you the basics of a very sweet story involving the Yankees and the Blue Jays.