Six months ago, while I was setting up a new code editor, I noticed that the default font size felt just a bit too small, when displayed on my monitor. Not a big deal, I just bumped it up one size and went back to my work.
Then it happened again, this time, when reading sheet music on my phone. “That’s weird,” I thought, as I increased the size. “This didn’t bother me before.”
I had always had perfect, 20-20 eyesight. When I finally realized that I was losing some of that sharpness, I felt a loss.
It wasn’t the first time, though.
About two years ago, I started having wrist pain while typing. On one particularly bad day, I became very worried. “Typing is how I provide for my family. What will I do, if I can’t type?” Soon I discovered that wearing wrist braces at night helped make the pain go away. I remember laying in my bed in wrist braces, thinking, “I’m 36 years old. I’m too young to need wrist braces for the rest of my life,” and I felt a loss.1
After a few losses like these, it would be easy to adopt a narrative that I’m in physical decline, losing capability daily, with all my best achievements in my past. It’s a sad story. A fragile story.
I decided that one way I could push back against this story is to set a new weightlifting goal: a 250-pound bench press.
It was an unthinkable goal back when I benched 200. I didn’t plan on going heavier, but I enjoyed my weightlifting routine, so I kept showing up. By the time I hit 235, I realized that maybe 250 was possible. I felt excited and motivated just thinking about it. I wanted to go for it.
But just like last time, I hit a plateau.2 I was able to bench 245 once, last summer, but I spent the next 6 months unable to do it again. As I turned 39, I wondered if I was fighting against time.
And then it happened.
All of us are going to have to learn how to grow old. The aging itself is easy, but learning how to handle the losses is more challenging. Today, I can tell myself, “my eyesight may be declining, but I’m stronger than I’ve ever been.” Next year, who knows. Maybe I’ll get into pickleball.
There are endless opportunities for personal growth, and if we exhaust the supply of physical milestones we can still progress intellectually, creatively, and spiritually. Life offers plenty of PRs to pursue, if we’re willing to look for them.