Dante called the age from forty-five to seventy and beyond the Age Of Wisdom. In some parts of India, the wise get sent out to the forest. IN some Native-American tribes, they set off alone to meditate and die.

In the West, we expect the aged to stay in society, look around with a jaundiced eye and share the benefit of their experience. Joseph Campbell says the the qualities of aging are wisdom, justice,  generosity,  and humor or cheerfulness.

At this age, people have little or nothing to lose. we are approaching the evening. We have nothing to prove, and apart from death itself, less and less to fear. I am getting wiser all of the time, and I had a very long way to go.

For all of my life, I have loved to walk, that is my sport and one of my passions, it is the best possible way to see and understand the world, it is soothing and healing for me, and always inspiring.

The world on foot is my muse and my mentor. Growing older is not linear, it is not a straight line, it is a series of changes and  revelations, some up, some downs, a slow, gradual series of new understandings.

I’ve always had some problems with my feet, surgeons have long wanted to smash up one ankle and foot and rebuild it, I have declined the opportunity. I am still walking every day, often more than once, on roads, in forests and whenever I can, in cities like New York. It was when I was struggling to walk up a modest hill two years ago that I realized my heart was failing. I could not bear the thought of not walking, and so I woke up, and my life and my ability to walk was saved. I charge up those hills gratefully every day, if a bit more moderately.

But there is change, that is part of being mortal, and so is learning wisdom and acceptance.

In the past few years, something new has arisen when I walk on the concrete of big cities. My feet have changed and flattened out, if I walk for any real length of time, I get blisters, my legs and ankle finally protest after many decades of walking all the time. My body is changing.

The blisters are painful, and I am told, for a diabetic, potentially dangerous.

There are a number of things I can do about this, all kinds of special socks and shoes and wraps, although I very often forget to do them. Not walking as often and reflexively as I always have is a very difficult thought for me. I don’t really get it, but my feet are talking to me.

There is moleskin that prevents blisters, there are soft and more pliant shoes for me to wear (thanks but I don’t need advice about this, I’ve had plenty) but the thing is, I have to prepare myself, I have to remember.

it takes time and forethought. I am an impatient man, i live in the now and this week, even though I knew I was going to New York, I just, as usual, threw my camera in the bag and put on my hiking boots. And I walked and walked and walked, as I love to do. But the last few hours were different, I was walking in pain. Maria, seeing me grimace and grunt, asked if I was all right, and of course I said I was. I didn’t care to be asked. This is the awful and often fatal disease of men.

It’s odd, I have no trouble walking in the woods for hours, but a few hours on the concrete floors and walks of New York now causes trouble for me, various things – the blisters, my ankle – begin to hurt, I begin to hobble.  I have walked all over New York for so much of my life, it is almost impossible for me to accept this new reality. But I will. That is wisdom.

I am a veteran teeth-gritter and stoic, I soldier on, but I have spent a lot of time since I returned patching up my feet and recovering from my seven or eight hours of walking. I am getting it.

So acceptance and wisdom swirl around me once more, and to be wise means to finally understand.

I will get there when I next understood this: I can walk as much as I want, (almost) but I can no longer take those feet for granted. I must support them as they have supported me and protect them, and thus protect me. Denial is just another form of lying, it does not slow age or prevent death. I learned this from my heart and am now learning it from my feet as well.

I took care of the one, and I can take care of the other. In a sense, all pain and sorrow is a lesson, a chance to see beyond both.

I am a combat veteran of the hero journey, I believe the way to find your myth, to realize  your adventure, to find your support, is to know your place in life. The problems of youth are not the problems of age, neither are the solutions. The penalties and consequences of hubris grow exponentially as one ages.  Wisdom comes gradually, not in single revelations, if it comes at all. And despite our arrogance, there is no one way to get older any more than there is one way to die. You may think you know what is best for me and others, but you don’t.

I have to follow my own path, just as you have to follow yours. That is the very idea of acceptance.

There is nothing more important than bring fulfilled, that is my signal to the world that I am alive and was alive.

The question for me, when all is said and done, is this: what am I looking for? It is to fulfill the potential that is in me, and I believe in every human being. It is a tragedy every time a single person  fails to search or is denied the chance. The quest is not an ego trip or an action movie, it is to bring into fulfillment my gift to the world, and that is me.

I will keep walking.