On Aging

Forget catchy phrases like "You don't stop running because you get old--you get old because you stop running." (Walking, exercising, whatever....)

I say they've all missed the point: you get old because you stop going outside.

When I do my Thursday afternoon jog in the park, I frequently pass a couple of old guys sitting on a bench. They have a fluffy white dog underneath, and they're chatting and smoking a furtive cigarette or two. I see them in the 95-degree days of summer--they move to a shady bench--and the brisk chill of autumn.  And I suspect that the act of walking out, in sunshine and shade, to sit on that bench and talk, is doing them more good than the whiff of smoke could be doing harm.

It's sad when people are forced to stay inside, but sadder still when they choose to do so. I can understand being afraid to walk outside--you might trip, fall, break a hip and be confined to the hospital for weeks. That's a scary proposition...but consider the alternative.

Never feeling the wind in your face or the sunlight on your shoulders. Never seeing a star--or the horizon--or anything past your inner vision. Forgetting the moon's many faces. Smelling only chlorine-scenting bathwater, never rain on green grass. No longer forced to endure winter's crisp ache of ice-cold air in your nose.

Dear, sweet old people, do you ever stop to stare out your locked windows in summer, wondering why you ever dared to venture outside? Other than the grocery and the yearly doctor's visit, what's there to risk going outside for?

Just everything.