A Final Thought: Gracefully surrendering
By Mitch Allen
In Max Ehrmann’s poem Desiderata, which is essentially an instruction manual for life, he advises us to “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.”
Gracefully surrender, Max? That can be hard.
I’m constantly giving up “the things of youth,” but I usually go down kicking and screaming. Some things I gave up for health reasons; other things because my moral compass shifted.
For example, I have given up the annual joy of sweet corn on account of my not wanting to risk a diverticulitis flair up, and I gave up watching football because it amounts to a bunch of youngsters risking their long-term health for my amusement. To be honest, I’ll still walk in the room when my wife is watching a game (she’s not giving it up), but I’m no longer a rabid fan who memorizes stats and yells at the TV.
And I once loved to fish, but I gave that up, too. My old fishing buddies have passed on and many of my family members are now vegetarians who couldn’t bear to stick a worm with a hook, let alone clean a fish. Sometimes I buy a whole fish at the grocery store and clean it, just to make sure I’m not going soft (I recommend doing this outdoors so you don’t get scales all over the kitchen). Back when we fished, we just threw our catch in the cooler and didn’t give a moment’s thought to the fact that the fish were slowly suffocating to death. But now I know you’re supposed to use a “priest tool,” a kind of nightstick that you use to quickly dispatch the fish by hitting in the head just behind the eyes.
Who knew?
I’ve also given up pizza because gluten and dairy aggravate my psoriasis. And I gave up hickory smoking pork shoulders and ribs all day on summer holidays because the aforementioned vegetarians won’t eat it and pork has started to give me digestive distress. I still pull out the smoker now and again, but I just eat the baked beans and cole slaw, wrapping up the meat in tin foil and giving it away to friends and neighbors.
“Hey, Bob, you want a coupla slabs of ribs?”
“Uh, hell yeah, buddy.”
One of my favorite pastimes used to be waking early on Saturday mornings and cooking a big breakfast of eggs, grits, bacon, sausage, toast, etc. But I gave that up because I’m trying to manage my cholesterol without drugs, and two eggs has all the cholesterol I’m allowed for the whole freaking day. I do cheat, however. Sometimes when my wife has book club, I sneak away to Bob Evans and sit at the counter in a hat and sunglasses eating my weight in sausage and bacon. But don’t try to talk to me. I’ll pretend I don’t know you. My cardiologist has spies everywhere.
I surrendered my two-seater, convertible German sports car in favor of a brown Buick Encore. I call it my “dung beetle.”
I gave up cigars because I can’t afford to have my life insurance premium double due to tobacco use. That and, you know, they cause cancer.
So with all this surrendering, what have I actually added to my life?
For one thing, I drink a kale fruit smoothie for breakfast every day. That’s right, kale. A year ago I didn’t know what it was; now I grow the danged stuff. And my wife and I have turned the spare bedroom into a yoga room. A year ago I thought yoga was a character in a Star Wars movie. Now I enjoy it. It helps my posture which is terrible because I sit at a computer all day. I’m starting to look like that crooked man who lives in that crooked house.
I like to do yoga to the sound of rain or waterfalls. It masks the tinnitus raging in my ears from, you know, all that loud rock music our mothers warned us about.