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I'm at the age when you learn more about medicine than you had intended to, such as a T.I.A. or "transient ischemic attack" or what I call "temporary idiotic agitation," which recently happened to me, the sudden inability of even a published author to speak a simple declarative sentence, which is embarrassing, like suddenly wetting your pants.
Of course much of what you learn about medicine is good, such as noninvasive surgery: a doctor can rearrange body parts leaving such a tiny scar that your swimwear modeling career will hardly be interrupted. Injuries that once would've landed you in a rocking chair by the fireplace to peruse National Geographics in your twilight years — now physical therapists put you through your paces to make you nimble, supple, and adroit. And the best news: a study at Harvard shows there is no connection between a healthy lifestyle and longevity.
You heard me right. Those slender vegans in jogging pants do not thereby receive a GET OUT OF DEATH FREE card but run the same risks of choking on a cork or being flattened by a falling anvil or reaching for the energy drink in the fridge and instead getting the bottle of rat poison. Things happen.
I am living proof of this: two-pack-a-day chain-smoker for twenty years, glass of Scotch in my hand — I thought it was what serious writers did — and I loathed calisthenics, never jogged, my idea of physical exercise was cursive writing. And here I am about to turn 84 — it's like the pudgy kid winning the pole vault.
It's also an age when anxiety is swamped by gratitude. The plain goodness of life — the pleasure of getting out of bed and accepting the gift of one more day — I didn't feel this when I was in my early 20s and writing Poor Me poems about a lonely alienated hero but I feel it now. The soft breathing of the sleeping woman next to me, the hike to the kitchen, the smell of coffee.
I keep a warm place in my heart for friends who were cheated of life — Leeds who at 20 went through the windshield thanks to a drunk driver who pulled out on the highway, Barry who at 20 reached for the cigarette lighter on his dashboard and didn't see the school bus stopped ahead of him, Roger who at 18 dove off the rowboat to impress his girlfriend and forgot he couldn't swim. Cousin Lynne at 22 who pulled out onto the highway though the sun was in her eyes and the semi struck before the driver could hit the brake.
I keep them in my heart as a reminder not to waste the gift they were denied. Everyone has pain to deal with but talking about it makes it worse; a cheerful heart is a good strategy, which sounds trite because it is trite but nonetheless is true: when you feel down, you meditate on the goodness of life and let yourself be bucked up.
By "goodness of life," I don't mean Mozart's Ave Verum or the lilacs and tulips blooming this week in Central Park or the millions of galaxies a billion light years away, I am thinking of the miracle of this morning's shower, standing naked in all the complexity of Manhattan but I turn two knobs and hot water falls on me and flows out a drain. I'm thinking of the frozen waffles available at any grocery — I think of the laborious process of mixing dough and heating the waffle iron, which now is accomplished in two minutes in your toaster.
I'm married to a woman who is, thanks to healthy living, strong and quick, and has a playful nature and though respectful of my dignity as a published author, she has made numerous Terribly Interesting Advances toward me and every day brings the possibility of a fresh attempt.
A clean man drinks his coffee and eats his waffle and hears the approach of footsteps.
Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality. His latest book is "Cheerfulness". Buy it at a 38% discount! by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.