The Battle By Dr. Juan Harrison
The Battle
It’s a good day when all the essential body parts are working. Pain-free days become rarer as we age. Not sure when it started, but somewhere in recent days the battle between mental and physical control of the body intensified. I’ve often admonished us to watch out for the Lazyboy. It wants to suck us in like a magnet and keep us there. For a lot of us living with some tough pain we feel we’ve earned the right to be a lazy boy. Problem is all the medical folks tell us how too much sitting is bad on the heart and the rest of the body. Use it or lose it.
The mind is a powerful force. It can pick you up, or it can shut you down. The challenge for a lot of us senior folk is to not give in to that little voice that keeps wanting us to give up, give in and sit and wait for the hearse to arrive to pick us up. Seems like when we were younger, we had occasional ailments that we could battle one-on-one and finally get ourselves back into action though we might not really feel like it. Then senior days came along where the physical challenges became multiplied and made it a tougher fight. In retirement with a less structured schedule, the challenge is to not just put things off a bit but to totally put something we intended to do completely out of the picture. We feel we’ve earned the right. It’s at this point that it almost becomes a life-or-death decision. Like Morgan Freeman said in “Shawshank Redemption, “Time to get ready living or get ready dying.” The hanging noose above his head remained empty as he made the right call.
Most of us don’t die instantly. Seems like an old vehicle, this part quits working and then something else starts failing us. The battle is on. Realistically all these new achy friends we’re acquiring are simply reminders of our mortality. Hopefully while we’ve been blessed with additional time to prepare for our eternal destiny, we have to be careful and not procrastinate about decisions affecting our future beyond this life. A lot of folks waited a tad too long and didn’t anticipate that death was just around the bend.
Our mind is a powerful force. It can let us spend all our final days on earth moaning and groaning, or we can tell the Devil to get behind us as we refuse to give in to the recliner and a life of almost semi-death. Often, we find if we can get going and get involved with others we can almost forget our physical, mental, and emotional pain that may try to take all the joy out of our lives. Physical pain will be our companion most likely for the home stretch. How we react to it has a lot to do with the impact on our lives. Pain is real. How we live our lives as we deal with it is partly our choice. God says He will never forsake us. When the pills, shots, and stinky rubs don’t do the trick, fall back on a higher source to help ya back into the sunshine.
By Dr. Juan Harrison
