Range of Motion

With each passing day I find myself regaining a little more range of motion in my right arm. Recovering from a collarbone break is a long process that requires patience, but patience is not a skill I naturally have. I’d like to snap my fingers and poof, find myself magically at 100% health. Healing is not always measurable in days, however.

I heard an interesting metaphor for the process of aging: you are essentially stuck in quicksand, and at some point you will fully sink. The most you can ask for is a few tools to shovel the sand away temporarily. Some of these “tools” include diet, exercise, and sleep. Without them, you’ll sink faster.

“Just keep moving” tends to be my own mantra. Or as the bone break taught me, “Use it or lose it.” Four weeks in a sling cost me a great deal of mobility that will take awhile to regain.

To think that I was set back so far from just a month in a sling is eye opening. A life of inertia is surely crippling to one’s range of motion. I see it often in the office: the typical office employee could never dream of running one mile, nonetheless 26 miles. Heck, I’m not sure most can jog 400 meters comfortably. Can the typical employee even kick up his or her feet? It seems doubtful unless supplemented with some sort of cocaine-like stimulant beforehand. Granted, many do not care, as money and career are supposedly the priority, which culture does preach. I also note though that most are oblivious to the gravity of what they’ve lost. I’ll choose mobility any day.

A 40-year-old sedentary type and a 40-year-old routine exerciser are not biologically the same age range. This I’ve seen visibly. Their vitality and appearance are vastly different, almost as though they are not both Homo sapiens.

At running events, for example, it is common to see a 50-year-old capable of running fast speeds for hours at a time. It barely seems possible when first introduced to such feats. I remember running the mile as a child, for example, and winning by default simply because most of the kids couldn’t run the whole thing. Yet it is easy when swept in the excitement of such an event to believe that the norm is to cover vast distances, often at a quick base, with just your feet, and to do so well into your later years. An office will remind you that it is not the norm in America. The norm is a struggle up a flight of stairs. The norm is a pained shuffle from the car to the desk. The norm is a drive-thru food order, or these days, a phone app food delivery service.

As I write I realize the magnitude of my own desire to “just keep going”. Above I mentioned quicksand. Most nightmares I’ve ironically had since childhood involve running, but feeling slowed, or sinking in quicksand. In nightmares that involve swimming, the pool is often too dark for me to see and I quickly find myself lost. Or maybe my goggles leaked water to blind me. This doesn’t surprise me because nothing scares me more than stopping. I don’t necessarily mean stopping a daily exercise routine either. I mean stopping movement. Stopping the bikepacking adventures, the runs, the ocean swims, and the occasional game.

If given the choice, I’ll choose motion every time. Give me a shovel and I’ll see how long I can stay above the quicksand.

Cellular Renewal

I heard somewhere that the cells in our body are constantly dying and being replaced; it’s a lifelong cycle. Therefore, our cellular composition is different today than it was a decade ago. Our life is a constant process of death and rebirth, all the way to the final collapse.

Our memories are the primary means of linking our present self to the version of us that existed yesteryear. Many of the cells that actually experienced those events in our past, however, are dead. We maintain the memory, not the person who experienced the event.

Similarly, the body has a remarkable ability to heal itself, but even after a repair, it’s arguable that nothing will ever return to a previous state. I tore a foot, and the foot healed, but I don’t think the foot is the same as it was two years ago. It’s neither better nor worse; it’s just different.

Say your body is a CD, and over time the CD accumulates scratches. If one were to find a way to smooth the CD back to its original state, the CD would still not play like it once did. It would look nice, but it wouldn’t recapture the old sound.

How many aged bands struggle to return to the sound of their original album?

I find myself in a quest to mitigate time’s effects on me. I run farther, bike farther, eat better, and sleep better. I feel fresh, like I did decades ago. I’m told by my doctor that my biological age is 19. That’s pretty good, in theory.

But despite de-aging my biological clock, I know I’m not 19. And despite signing up for some endurance running events, something I’d avoided for years, I know that competition won’t mean the same thing to me that it meant in my adolescence. Maybe I can experience a semblance of that old feeling, but the newness of everything that youth experiences can never be fully regained. One can only be reminded of it. Maybe that reminder is enough.

Still, the dopamine rush from competition is close enough to what it was in adolescence. It’s not the same as it was back then, but the feeling of fun is still there. So it’s still worthwhile. There are still things to accomplish and things to improve on. I’m not going to collect another world championship gold medal in swimming, but I can continue getting faster for years, well into my 40s, and maintain that speed well into my 50s, 60s, and 70s. Maybe that’s worth pursuing.

“Matt vs. Time” is not a competition to maintain youth, or even to regain it. It’s an effort to keep the armor intact while time chinks away at it. It’s an effort to keep the CD running, even if it doesn’t play as well as it did on first purchase.

If I am now an aged band, however, there is no going back to the original sound. I have to accept my present state of being.

Fighting “time” is a means of continuing to do the things that I enjoy, without becoming a burden on the people I care about.

At some point, the cells I have at this very moment will die, and they will be replaced with something else. And that version of me will hopefully run farther and faster than the version of me that exists today. I won’t be young, but I’ll feel fresh, and better yet, I’ll be different.