I’m sure many of you have heard the expression that you don’t stop training when you get old, you get old when you strop training. The idea behind that is that when you stop maintaining your mobility and fitness, it can have adverse effects on your personal well being. Realistically speaking, the lessening of one’s physical health will also have an impact on the mental clarity, since the mind can’t exist without the body and vice versa.
A good example for this would be my dear mother. She’s spent her entire life taking care of others. Besides being a capable woman in her own right, it started with her caring for my ailing brother, who passed away at the age of 18, followed by caring for her elderly parents since she was the eldest daughter. Even as all of these people have passed away, she then began to dote and take care of my father, who unfortunately has a condition where his spine degenerates and has him wheelchair ridden. She’s always had someone to focus her attentions on. Once the smoke cleared and there was no one left to take care of, her mind slipped away.
Most people have been confused by this phenomena and don’t understand the connection between maintaining the body and maintaining the mind. While my mother has been in a state of hyper awareness for the majority of her life by virtue of caring for others, she’s never taken much care of herself. The result is her body has absolutely no ability to sustain her mind. As a result, she has slipped away. I just spoke to her on Sunday morning by Facetime and she thought my son was a little girl and had no idea who he was. Just a bit sad.
This is why it is so important to keep moving. In recent years, I’ve come to the realization that I can longer carry on in the same fashion as i have for the past few decades. My training in the martial arts has significantly helped in my battle against Type-1 Diabetes and has helped me out of more sticky situations, both personally and professionally, than I can possibly count. But there’s no chance in hell that I can do it like I used to. This was evidenced by a very unfortunate incident at a local karate dojo where I had a couple of my ribs fractured and my muscle wall crushed in a manner that I would have easily defended from in years prior.
It makes me realize that I need to slow myself down. This is not only important in order to accommodate my age, which will never stop, but to prevent unnecessary injury. BY the way, the older you get, the longer and more difficult it is to get over injuries and heal properly. But the important thing, if you paid attention and read the previous two paragraphs, is that you don’t stop moving. Slowing does not mean stopping. And the sooner you throw in the towel and say “screw it, I’m done,” the sooner your body will have difficulties accommodating your needs into the foreseeable future. And you need your body and your mind as long as you can manage it.
Slow down if you need to. Hey, we all get there. Do I think I could still kick some ass, if I needed to? You’d better believe it! Protect my loved ones? Anyone who would threaten the well being of my family would find out that even old dogs can still punch. But I recognize that maybe those two-hour karate sessions need to drop to only one hour. Maybe my 70-kilometres bicycle treks need to become 20 or 30 kilometres instead. I’ll never stop moving. I can’t. My health depends on it. But the manner in which I move and in what amounts are what make the difference. Food for thought… ☯️
The Blogging Buddhist 