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.