You're Too Damned Old and Too Damned Wise To Do This

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

From Facebook, I couldn’t find a source with reverse image search

For crying out loud, just do it. Now. As in, NOW.

Don’t say life has passed you by. Chances are you passed on life.

Swinton’s portrait appeared in my Facebook feed with the following text, attributed to her:

"If you didn’t do it at forty, then do it at sixty. The only thing that matters—is that you do it!"

My grandmother, who lived to be 97, always told me that life only gets better with time. And now? I finally understand what she meant.

Age is a funny thing. We live in a world obsessed with timelines—marry by this age, succeed by that age, retire by another. Miss a milestone? Society tells you the moment is gone forever.

But here’s the truth: that’s a lie.

If your twenties were full of doubts, make your forties wild.

If your forties were consumed by responsibilities, dance through your sixties.

If you didn’t burn brightly back then—ignite now.

There’s no deadline on joy. No expiration date on reinvention. No too-late for dreams.

So wear the bold colors. Book the ticket. Learn the language. Start over.

Because late? Is always better than never.- Tilda Swinton

Look. In a world where people consistently attribute a long rambling quote to the late Steve Jobs, things he never said but people desperately WISH he’d said, I have no clue if this is something Swinton said. I did check Snopes but didn’t get an answer.

That said, it’s a great quote.

What are you giving up on, waiting to do? What is holding you back?

It’s six am. I am about twenty minutes from heading to the gym. Yesterday I spent about two hours hiking the sand dunes on the Central Oregon Coastline, something I could barely do a year ago because of foot pain.

I chose to hike in the softest part, on angles, which is brutally hard. I sweated, cursed, fell, brushed off, laughed, sweated, cursed and laughed some more. My dog Mika hurtled in all directions, rolled in dead seagulls and cut figure eights in the pristine sand and sixty-degree temperatures.

Back at my house it got to 97. On the coast we topped out at 65. I love it here. The weather makes it easy to work out hard.

I wish I could run. I may never run again with these feet, but I can hike sand. Finally, now that I’m healed up enough, Mika and I are hiking again, me with a weighted vest and feet that will bark at me later, but I am sweating.

I can feel my VO2 coming back, and with it my energy, enthusiasm and greater vitality. I was tested recently and told that my lung capacity was slightly above average for a 72-year-old woman.

Oh my god those were fighting words. As someone who trained at altitude for years in Colorado to climb very big mountains, that’s feedback. Got me right in my big fat ego.

Good. Because I’m highly motivated. Now that I can train, I have ground to recover. The best news is that you can indeed build VO2, muscle mass, power and endurance at any age, even if you never had before.

All those things give us options. Options to “dance through our sixties.”

Options to play hard into our eighties.

My workout routine is getting a makeover as well, as I feel the difference in my body. I’ve always lifted, but now that I can finally put cardio back into the agenda I can up the difficulty. Today is leg day.

Truth, all days are leg days if we can, as legs are the secret to mobility. For me, it’s essential becasue I have goals. One of them is a multi-day bike trip with Northwest Discoveries, the sister company to my client Oregon River Experiences. It’s already booked.

I am so jazzed about that trip.
I have work to do.

Because of foot surgeries I’ve not been on a bike for ages. This trip, my first bike adventure in years, is for older folks and beginners. While I am no beginner, here’s my take: I don’t care what I used to be able to do forty years ago, like bike over Vail Pass.

That was a seven-hour, 100+ mile trip. Fine.

That was then. This is now.

The way people get seriously injured is they don’t respect where they are now, and try to do something that leaves them crippled and discouraged. I respect the fact that the last seven years have been all about repairing damage, constant physical therapy and a long slog to get my body parts working again.

Because bones have been removed, screws and pins are now part of my skeleton and various ligaments and bits are damaged beyond repair, parts of me will never work the same. That said, I am still mobile, I can still work out.

Right now I am slowly but surely coming back, inch by inch, from seven long years of big surgeries and some big losses as a result.

The best of all possible news is that the fifty years I put into workouts and exercise prior have set me up to succeed, but not if I try to do too much, too soon.

Photo by Jan Romero on Unsplash

I have a problem with proprioception which in my case means I can’t always tell where my feet are. This is the result of surgery on both feet, with resulting nerve damage.

That cost me a broken hip two years ago this month, which resulted in more down time and weaker bones from lack of weight-bearing work.

That was a two-year setback. I am just now really starting to ramp up again.

If I want to hike again, that means I’m going to have to slow way down and watch where I put my feet. I’ve always used hiking poles but in the future they might save my life.

This isn’t something to be angry about- I am so damned lucky to be upright and walking that these adaptations are minor.

Are your setbacks excuses to not be fully in life?

Or are they gifts through which we further discover ourselves as we age?

The harder I work the better I feel. I still have to put in PT time every single day. The good news is that I can see the results. The more work I do, the faster things improve.

There were times that I honestly thought I’d never see any kind of improvement. I’ll bet many of you can relate.

It’s just one reason why I bang the drum about exercise so much. When I began my adventure career at sixty, I never imagined that ten years later I’d be recovering from all the spectacular accidents that sent me home on a gurney. We pay for our play.

Life exacts a price from us over time. Our bodies show wear and tear, we wrinkle, we stoop. We forfeit youth for long life. In the meantime, if we’re fortunate, we fill our lives with plenty of life, memories and stories.

Swinton’s quote underscores what I strongly believe: it ain’t over until we say it is.

As long as you and I draw breath, we can change. We can live. If we are lucky enough to be mobile in any way, let’s live to the fullest we can.

Get out. Get active. If injured, heal. Do the PT. Do the work. Make the way for play, until the waters take us home.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s leg day at the gym.

Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

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