Is this what it feels like to be old?

 Forgive my continuing moaning about a long-running cold as if it were '28 Days Later', but it has got me rather thinking about what it must be like if, for whatever reason, this is your permanent new normal. I know that there are people who spend their whole lives living with chronic conditions that affect them much more than this temporary inconvenience does, and that they do so boldly and heroically,  but it has gone on for so long that I have started to see it as a sneak preview of old age. I have also just noticed that ironically I have now had this cold for 28 days.

The main things I notice is that the various symptoms make me set limits on things that I know will be past me. I have taken several taxis in the last few days over distances that I would have walked easily in the past, because I am aware that I simply don't have the energy for the walk anymore. I leave things on the floor which I would otherwise have picked up. I look at the letter I need to send and think 'it can wait'. I try to read a book and end up watching TV. All of these 'small surrenders'. And I know that this will pass and that I will forget about it. But when it is something that you have to admit is permanent, simply because we are a mortal species and that mortality has a long tail to it, is it much more painful? Do you bear it with good grace? Or maybe worst of all, do you simply not notice?

Now I understand that yearning after lost youth, or lost middle age or lost quite-relatively-healthy sixties is a fool's game. It has no point at all to it, and you have to accept that even though you are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, you have the achievement of not having died in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and sixties as some of your contemporaries did. And you have had a damn good run. And if you have been careful or lucky enough to store up enough experiences, joy, love, risk-taking and fun so that 'when your life flashes before your eyes there will be something to watch', you must accept that old age was part of the deal. 

Now I am not asking for feedback from my older readers really. Your life is your own, and I know of several older friends and relatives who have the gusto of someone a third their age. So I know that this does not come to all of us, but I have seen it come to several. The 'knowing your limits' is a double-edged sword that I have seen some people fall for. As soon as you set limits you will eventually see them as too wide and will cut them further. The circle closes in on you. A certain emotional sclerosis affects some, where things that would have drawn their sympathy before are now too much to think about, and they become not quite what they were in humanity. I suppose a life spent as a very good person does entitle to you pack it all in a bit over the last few years, but you feel their younger self would be sad to see what had happened. And - I really must emphasise - this is not a universal thing at all in our last decades. I have several friends in their eighties and nineties who are the most energetic, empathetic and committed humans you could come across. They may creak, but boy do they care, and do something about it. 

Now in my own case, I do understand that all of my current symptoms are temporary and that when the bug goes the letters will get answered, the underpants picked up and the books read. But I also understand that somewhere, possibly many years down the line, the myeloma will assert itself and I will run out of some of my current gusto. I do not like that fact, after this sneak preview, and I promise to go down fighting with my best cravat and waistcoat, doing a Dandy version of striving, seeking, finding and not yielding. And I hope that my heart will still be tender to the pain of others, and see their love and their hearts. I cannot promise but I can wish. And one thing I can also wish is that this ******* cold doesn't let the door hit it on the way out.