Wanzology

Getting Old
 
Keep putting faith in front and believe the best is yet to come, you'll see!! Trust, trust the process!! And that's what they tell you to do. And, uh, yeah, I, I won't disagree with it. I won't poo-poo it. I will just say for now. Yeah, let's do that. How you doing? How you doing? I am The Wanz and you have stumbled onto another episode of WANZOLOGY!! And if it's your first time, welcome.

This is a perspective-based podcast where I have a topic and I share with you my experience with said topic. Then I challenge you to compare what I have gone through with whatever it is you've either gone through or are going through, because I'm a firm believer in humans needing to share their experiences in order to learn. To learn more, about life in general. This episode is going to be about getting old because everybody does it, but no one does it the same.

Getting old is one thing that you have no choice over and you've been doing it all your life. Once you get past the self-awareness part when you're a kid and as you grow, getting older means different things. I mean, when you're a kid and it's like, “Oh, when am I going to be big enough to have my own bike with just two wheels and no training wheels.”, “When am I going to be able to fix my own peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”, “When am I going to be able to walk to school by myself?”, these are things that I can think of. When are you going to be old enough to be left alone when your parents go to the movies? When are you going to be old enough to be trusted with the car, when are you going to be old enough to be able to study on your own without guidance, go to class, learn and evolve in an environment full of people just like you doing the same thing. When are you going to be old enough and responsible enough to buy your own car, snag your own apartment by yourself, feed yourself, pay all your bills. When are you going to be old enough to get a break on insurance, because you're over 25. And now you can rent a car. When are you going to be old enough to be a parent? That could have happened when you were in high school, but if you haven't yet become a parent, when do you think you're going to be old enough to be a parent? And if you are a parent, when do you think you're going to be old enough not to worry about your kids, or grandkids?

See what I mean? The evolution of a human being is never ending, always changing.
And I don't know where you happen to be in your life, but one thing that you and I share is we're getting older. Not a second passes by that a human being, the world, everything is not getting older. It always is. “Time waits for no man!”, the saying goes. Time waits for no ‘thing’, no person, place, thing, or situation. Because that's the reality. So, how much do you think about getting older? Have you decided what path you're going to take when it comes to your future? What is your future? Next week? Six months? Five years? There are people who have like a ten-year plan and I'm like, Man, that's a lot of, that's a lot of variables, cause a lot can happen in 10 years. And if you haven't figured it out yet, life can be a bit unpredictable, unexpected, circumstances out of your control, drive, whatever situation you're in. That's how you got there. We are all a victim of circumstances. Sometimes those circumstances are created by us, sometimes they're not.

If you're familiar with the serenity prayer, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”, that last line, that's the catch.

How do you know when you're wise? The difference between what and what? How do you know? The answer? Experience, which you have. You have experience and your experience is your own and there are similarities to a lot of other people, places, things, but it is still unique to just you. And the question that I have is how much do you rely on your experience when it comes to getting older?

Can you remember the difference between turning 16 and turning 18? What was different? What was different? Can you remember the difference between turning 18 and turning 21? What was different? If you haven't gotten to these places yet, you will. If opportunities keep going and something happens, you keep breathing. If you keep breathing, time is passing and as long as time's passing, you got a shot! You got a chance to get older. All you got to do is watch the first 10 minutes of any news broadcast, any local news broadcast will show you in the first 10 to 12 minutes. Those people who may not have made it as far as you did because people die all the time. They stop breathing for one reason or another. No matter how bad life seems to be, always remember, as long as you're breathing, there is an opportunity for change.
Opportunity that's no guarantee, it's exactly what it is, opportunity.

I am 63 years old on the 9th of October of our Lord. 2024, and at 63 years old, I have outlived many people, some family members. My brother, who's 10 years older than I was, he passed away when I was 38. He never made it this far. And it used to freak me out. I have aunts and uncles who live longer than my parents. And I don't know what it's like to be them. I have an idea, but I didn't grow up on my mom's side of the family, one of eight kids. And on my dad's side, my parents didn't pass away before I was 11.
Both of them had different experience than I'm having. My experience has been very good comparatively speaking and when I say that, I mean, I can find a lot of examples where I had more opportunities than some and less than others. I can find plenty of opportunities that I didn't take advantage of some of those opportunities, but then I created others, they were available, so I took them.

Life is a participation sport, you have to participate. Even if you choose not to do anything, you're still participating in your life. Getting old is not for the faint of heart. Because once you get to a certain age, for me it was when I got to 35, at that time, statistics were saying that I had exactly 37 more years, on average, to live. 77, life expectancy for the average male, when I turned 35. Well I'm 63, now what happens? Does that mean I only have, what, 12 years to live? What am I going to do? I have absolutely no idea. None. Which is okay. Here's where the grease hits the wheel, none of us really knows what we're doing, none of us. We have an idea of what we could do, but we don't know what we're doing until after it's done. Then we can evaluate what we did and try to apply that to whatever is next that we might want to do. It's this very interesting paradox. I'll explain it this way, whatever day you're listening to this episode on, that's what day it is. You go back seven days and that day was not the same as the one you're in. Seven days from now will be different than where you are right now. Even though all the days end in ‘Y’, they're all different. Every single one of them, every single day is different and every hour in each day is different. is different and every minute in an hour is different and so on and so on. When you start breaking down how time passes and what you're doing while you're evaluating how time passes, that is the practice of getting older. You notice what's going on.

I used to think it was kind of like magic, that I could mow the grass on a Saturday, and then by Thursday, it was long again, even though I never saw it actually grow. Weird, huh? Or when they say, it's cloudy in the morning it's going to clear off. How long does it take for that to actually happen? I think it's interesting how many things are going on while we're in our process of figuring out what's going on with us. I'm recording this podcast right now. I don't know what you're doing. Hopefully you're well and the people that you care about are well and it's not, you know, you're not in a disaster of some sort trying to make it through, but we're getting older all the time.

Depending on where you are in your journey, you might feel some sort of way about it.
You might feel afraid that you've missed something in your life. You might be angry that you didn't get a chance to do something in your life. You may be extremely happy at the things that have Happened in your life, and you can't wait to see what's next, conversely you could really hate where you are right now because everything that came before it was horrible. I'm sorry if it was horrible, but I'm pretty sure that it won't stay that way unless you make it stay that way I've said in many an episode we are as humans blessed with many things But chief among them is the power of choice. In the middle of the Get Lucky song when I'm doing the rap, I say:

“Chances will keep comin’ sure as the sun rise every day,
You can choose to sit and watch’em pass
Or grab what's yours to take!”

What does that mean? You have the power and the privilege to take advantage of every single moment in your life. The question is, how are you going to do that? Are you going to make a big decision where you're going to receive or give something really big, or is it really small, like, “Oh crap, am I going to actually try to get that french fry that fell in between the seats? Or am I just going to leave it?”. You have to make a choice. That's how you live. People who don't make choices or run away from choices, they live as well. It's probably not the life that they want. Do you know what you want? I have a lot of trouble figuring out what I want. Any given time, I really don't have any idea what I want. I think about what I want, but I learned a long time ago that most times it's better to look at what you have rather than what you want.

What you want will always change depending on a circumstance. You want things to turn out, right? You want things to just be smooth, but it always changes depending on the circumstance. But what you have, what you have is the results of what you either wanted or didn't want. Whether it be the device you're listening to this podcast on, who you've chosen as a significant other if you have one, the vehicle you might be in, the job that you have, the place that you stay, these are all results. These are all things that you have. Me, if things are going sideways, things are really bad. If I feel that things are really, really bad, I try to remind myself what I have is a breath, nice and simple. Take a couple inhales, couple exhales, just to remind myself that, yeah, I'm aware that I do have ‘this’ and all this means is that I have a chance for whatever's coming. I have a chance; I have an opportunity. No guarantees, just opportunities. That's all life is. That's all getting old is.

Remember back when you were in elementary school, you went out for recess and had a choice of what you wanted to do. Play on the monkey bars, maybe play a game of the ball like dodgeball or foursquare, maybe tetherball, maybe you were just going to swing on the swings, maybe you didn't want to do anything because it was raining. Maybe you didn't go out for recess. By the time you hit junior high or middle school, there was no recess, but you had that time in between classes. What did you do then when you were getting older from sixth or seventh grade to ninth grade? How did you change? Were you cooler, nerdier, more clumsy, shyer, more fearful, braver, more of a nice person or more of a jerk. And then from ninth grade to graduation, that is, if you graduated, how were you different? This is the process. The process is time is passing and you get the choice what to do that gets you to the next moment and then when you turn around at any given moment, you look at how you as an individual got older. That's what it is. That's the process and as long as you're breathing the process continues when you're asleep, the process still continues you just utter unaware and when you wake up you pick up where you left off or you endeavor to do something different, or you find your way.

But getting older, getting old It's more a frame of mind because not everybody gets old. Some people passed away within the first three years of their life.

Some people passed away in the tenth year of their life. 20, 30, 40, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. Can you imagine what getting old as Jimmy Carter, the ex-president Jimmy Carter who 100th birthday? What was his process of getting old like? We're all getting older. Hopefully, if we've learned a few things, tried and failed at a few things. We're getting better, and I think when those two go together, we tend to be happier. I appreciate that you are getting older with me, because it would really suck if either you and I were not here, getting older together. I like the team sport, buddy system aspect of life, one of my favorites. We do things together, whether we know the person next to us or not.
And everybody's doing the same thing you are, getting old.

So, I would suggest take the Ferris Bueller way of looking at things. Remember, Ferris says, “Life moves pretty fast! If you don't look around once in a while, you might miss it!!”, you might miss it. Getting old is a privilege, one that I hope you get to exercise for a lot of moments in front of you so that you have a lot of moments you can look at behind you. Good luck!!

See you next week.