The philosophers are correct. There is no greater teacher than life.

Life teaches us many things. One of the things it has taught me is to never again say “I will never do that.”

Because in the course of any given week, my schedule is stuffed with the things  I proudly announced many times that I would never do, and have absolutely no interest in what I want to do.

It has become a medical ritual with one doctor after another, one that causes me to break out laughing in front of earnest physicians who tell me what I need to do.

Most of my doctors are much younger than I am, and they have little awareness of just how ironic (and funny, if you retain a sense of humor), that my evolution is. I’ve gone from being the “I’ll never do that guy” to being a “what do you want me to do guy?.”

I just want to sleep and have sex for as long as is possible, I tell them. My goals are getting simpler as my life gets shorter.

The best way to endure our Machaveilian health care system – and life, for that matter –  is to bow to it and bless it and go along with it all. There are relatively few things you can do something about.

The

My doctors don’t much care what I want, either. They pay no attention to my “never will do..” list:

I will never submit to western medicine. I will never take needles for my insulin (or wear diabetic socks). I will never wear a mask to help me sleep. I will never take medication for my prostate. I will never need open-heart surgery. I will never have prostate surgery. I will never fill my life with medicines and trips to the pharmacy. I promised I would never build a garden.  I promised I would not go to doctors all the time and would heal only with holistic medicines. I promised I would never get divorced, or live on a farm, or leave a city to live in the country. I promised I would never argue my beliefs with strangers.  I told my first wife that I agreed that photography was a waste of time and money.

I have to stop writing this list now because I am starting to shiver and not be able to stand myself.

I boasted once that I would never ride a bicycle. Or eat Mexican food or cooked vegetables or shellfish. Or write about politics again. I promised I would never argue my politics online.

I have kept a number of promises I made to myself lately, although the numbers still shrink in comparison with the things I promised I would not do or would do.

I promised I would do some good every day.  I really have stopped arguing with strangers and it has brightened my life and softened it.

I promised I would never wear a tie or jacket again. I haven’t. I promised I would honor and love Maria. I have. I promised I would never return to corporate life and abandon all contacts and contracts with corporate America in my writing. I haven’t.

I promised I would never go to another cocktail party. Or bitch about politicians.  I promised I would apologize to my daughter for leaving her life when she needed me to be there. I’ve done all three.

In one sense, I think this separates youth from aging. The young walk around with their chests puffed out, as I did,  declaring what they will never do.

An irony of life is that if you are old you remember being young, but if you are young, you can’t imagine growing old. The elderly are invisible in many ways, young people can’t even see them (unless they are Amish children.) People don’t want to see them, they are scary.

But as I get older, I come to understand what it is I can do and what it is I can’t. I just never quite knew.

Maria and I talk about this often. When I see a doctor and undergo a procedure, she worries but then thinks it’s all over and things will be normal. I love getting older and am getting good at it, but one thing I can say about it is that aging is a process and once you are in it, you are in it to the end.

And it is never over.

Just when she thought we were done with hospitals, I am planning to sleep over next week to have my sleeping tested while a thousand wires are attached to my head.

I told my pulmonary specialist just yesterday that I always said I would never put a mask on over my face at night while my wife was sleeping next to me. He nodded as if I was a fetching child bragging about my spelling test. You have sleep apnea, he said. It can be dangerous.

Okay, I said. What’s next?

Maria insists on driving me to the hospital and picking me up the next morning. To my surprise, I’d like her to do that.

She is no summer soldier, she’s in it for the duration.

Oddly but wonderfully, my writing seems to get better as I get older. That’s a big one.  Old writers always told me this might happen, but I just thought they were living in their own delusions. Maybe I am too.

But I honestly think it’s because finally, and after all these years of being told what to do, I am writing what I want to write, and damning to hell the people telling me what I should write. This allows the real me to surface, after years of trying – and failing – to listen to other people.

It is liberating, affirming, and yes, sweet.

It is also freeing up the inner soul in me, I like who I really am, as some of the dust and drama (bullshit) is shaken off, and a lot of other people are liking who I am now also.

This is one of the things I love so much about my Amish friendships. They could care less who the real me is, they are happy to accept the one they see.

This is also what I love about being alive, every day is a wondrous experiment in love, thought, and acceptance.

I didn’t know how much I really love life until I started loving my life, and loving me.  And then, being loved. One follows the other. Love attracts love like honey attracts ants.

In one’s ’70s (and right on schedule), the body starts to fall apart and  I can accept this with grace and humor. I might live a while, I might keel over tomorrow. The doctors have lots of new toys and tricks. They are all little Merlins to me, mixing their potions and peering into the future.

 

A vast medical system exists to keep me going for a good while. I won’t let it be for too long, I know that’s no fun, it can be a sour deal all around. It turns out I am a sissy when it comes to self-preservation. As long as they don’t tell me what to write, they can do what they want to my body.

And I feel a lot of life in me.

Life is what you make of it at any age. Every day is a new opportunity for me to be a better and more complete human being. I will not stop working on that to the very end. I don’t intend to end my life by saying “I will never die..” I will die and I don’t want to meet all those dogs on any bridge.

The biggest success of my “I will never…” era is that I promised years ago to the Rev.Billy Graham that I would never speak poorly of my life, and I didn’t and don’t.

He told me if I kept that promise, I could avoid being a snarky, mean-tempered old man.

Bless him, I think he was right.

If their eyes and minds are open, older people have learned the humbling lessons of arrogance and humility whether they want to or not.

I told one doctor that I would treat diabetes by myself. She told me I would be dead and without some of my toes in three years if I didn’t get the right medicine.

I told a doctor I would exercise and run and strengthen my heart without surgery. She showed me some MRIs and said I would not live to see more than a few sunsets.

I was skeptical, my body was screaming at me to believe them.

It turns out I wanted to live more than I wanted to be stupid.

For a while, that wasn’t clear, and I have given up being stupid only after a long hard resistance and several near-death experiences. It turns out my holistic path nearly killed me twice.

I’ve had my issues with my parents, but one thing I will always give them: they turned me into a scrapper, and that saved my life more than once.

Even when you can’t think, you can fight.

And if you watch the news, or go on social media, you can see for yourself that so many people would much rather fight than think. This is becoming the soul of New America.

The other break I’ve had is that I can laugh at myself, and I do that all the time. That makes the bumps a lot smaller. I think I am ridiculous and that lowers the stakes for me. I don’t have much to lose.

How about mixing it up, said Karen, my wonderful primary care nurse, about western medicine and holistic medicine when I came gasping for air into her office.

She’s the one who said famously, “no, you a——, you’re not having an asthma attack, you’re having a heart attack. We’re calling an ambulance.”

I never once feared dying, what I really feared was staying alive.

I like me better know, thanks mostly to some extraordinary women – a therapist, my wife, a nurse practitioner, and a heart surgeon. It turns out they were all smarter than I am, and once I accepted that and started listening to the smart women around me, my life has been steadily upgraded.

The bottom line. Each one of my “I  will never…” as I now call them, has been a precious lesson in life. A therapist once apologized to me for yelling at me during one tempestuous session. “Oh, don’t feel badly,” I said, “I know that it can be hard to get my attention. But once you do, I really listen.”

She laughed.

So that’s the bottom line…I will never say “I will never again…” Never.