Can You Still Dance to the Music?

Growing up, my Mom had various sayings that all had both meaning and effect on our lives. One, in particular, was about our changing state as we aged. You may have heard it before. The second stanza had these words:

“When I was young, my slippers were red; 

I could kick up my heels right over my head. 

When I was older my slippers were blue, 

But still, I could dance the whole night through. 

Now I am older, my slippers are black. 

I huff to the store and puff my way back. 

But never you laugh; I don’t mind at all: 

I’d rather be huffing than not puff at all!

This anonymous poem had the title “My get-up-and-go has got up and went!” It was so common to walk by that little plaque on the wall and chuckle. For many years I could quote it by heart, but time and tide erased the words, and then, as my age started creeping up on me, that prose came back to mind. Lots of things can kick-start memories for us that remind us of either better, or past, days.

I perhaps have mentioned before that in my work I visited nursing home a lot. Even before I entered ministry I was often called upon by families to visit an elderly person after they had had a stroke. For some reason, I most often understood what they wanted or needed, though their speech may have been very slurred.  I have no corner on some miraculous ability to understand, but perhaps a bit of empathy for those who suffer through uncontrollable circumstances in life. Growing up, surrounded much of my early life with elderly people in our home, I seemed to grasp the changes in life that come no matter what, as we age. There were a lot of changes in our household in my formative years!

I for some reason was able to connect with the elderly and that made me an asset to some families. One dear lady at a Bible Study, which I was conducting at a nursing home, answered me right away when I asked who thought they could jump some six feet between two lines marked on the common room floor. She brightly said with a huge smile on her face, “I can jump that right now with no problem at all!” There was laughter in the room and we smiled at each other as I continued with the lesson. Afterwards, another lady came up to me and said, “What was that Marjorie thinking; she been a double amputee for ten years!” I explained that amputation did not change her minds ability to easily jump that distance like she could when she was perhaps sixteen. The lady laughed; “Guess she was right… easy back then!”

We for a variety of reasons limit ourselves through the years. When I was single I felt no hesitation to go on various questionable adventures. There is a lot less common sense surrounding our mortality during those early years of our lives. Not long after my wife and I were married, I began to travel with a white-water canoe group, taking trips on rivers that were on occasion questionable, to say the least. On one such outing, we lost eighteen of the twenty-one canoes that had begun the journey down a rain-swollen river. It had been surveyed about a month earlier and deemed safe, but after torrential rains, it had then reached a scale beyond safe. It did not take long to find that heavy water in narrow rapids was far worse than had been estimated earlier, and was going to take a toll on both our bodies and our canoes. Being dumped twice, and losing the canoe that I shared with another, I decided to walk out the rest of that day. My decision was based on the responsibilities I carried at both home and work. I was now married and had a family, and to take unnecessary chances seem foolhardy to my wife and extended family. It was not a hard decision, but one that for certain made changes in my life.

One’s ability to maintain youthful exploits varies with both circumstance and conditioning. My early life’s work was rigorous, dangerous and took its toll on my body. I say that, and yet a career change took me from the danger of being electrocuted to one that had its own set of dangers, innate in both environment and spectrum, due to prerequisites that confront on an almost daily basis. In India, on one of my first trips, I blew out both knees and years later that damage has caused me to hesitate taking stairs unless absolutely necessary.  I can walk on the level with no problem and I am thankful for that. We tend to make decisions on those two previously mentioned reasons, circumstance and conditioning. Some would say, “Just stay in shape!” Others are more circumspect in their advice, as life for them has changed due to sudden events of health or other critical issues.

I don’t think that we are meant to just dry up and fade away. I know many seniors and near-seniors, who live active or near hyperactive lives, and are doing fine. In the words of one of my long-time friends, “I wish I had not jogged for so many years!” The constant compaction on “his” particular knee joints made a difference, while others are able to jog for years and seem to do just fine with it. Is there a magic age to begin to slow down? Can we gauge our lives on what others are doing for recreation and health maintenance? While I would love to do some of the things my friends are doing, I still have to maintain that level of health I blessed with now, while not allow myself to slip into too much of a sedentary lifestyle just yet. There will be lots of time for that when the kids slap me into a nursing home!

So … This Grampa got his groove on one day this past week! Remember that stanza in the prose up there? It seems that though my slippers may now be black, I can still wring one dance out of these old knees. You can laugh now, or be terribly shocked that an ol’ Baptist minister would do such a thing! I do get that latter reaction, but that is expected. I was sitting listening to a local band that plays my style of music when a lady asked me to dance. Well, truth be told, she compelled me to dance, as she almost dragged me kicking and screaming onto the surface of the exhibition arena floor. Screaming no… embarrassed yes, but while my mind said what am I doing, my heart was remembering fifty years ago when this was second nature and fun was being had. I relaxed and shuffled with the music. Did it hurt me? No! Did it hurt anyone else? No! Really all it did was remind me that most things are possible while some remain only tenable. The acceptability factored comes in with our evaluation of personal social and moral registers. I had several comments following a social media post that was only meant to add a bit of levity to the day, for my friends. Two, in particular, stand out. Both held credence, both held joy in their own right, even though they were very different in content. I smiled while reading both.

There is little we undertake in life that doesn’t add meaning a lot, in the huge picture. Some say that the best we achieve are those things meant to enhance the lives of others. While I agree with that sentiment, for the most part, I also know that that many a life has been spent in the endeavour of pleasing others, only to eventually find personal emptiness in later years, due to a lack of self-care along the way. The gal who grabbed me at the music event had one thing on her mind and that was to help “make” me have fun again. It was not a judgmental call per say, but one based on her limited knowledge of my situation and circumstance in life. She was challenging me, and it was neither “bad” nor wrong to do so. I did enjoy myself once I got “out there”! The little things we do each day need to have a positive cumulative effect to them, as they collectively form both attitude towards life and an acceptance of our situation therein. I’ve heard it said that for each good deed, there is a bonus in it for you. I wonder if that is not sometimes too hedonistic in nature. If I only do things for others to make myself feel good then I may be missing the mark. But on the other hand, we have to find a balance in all we do and so never doing something for others may lend itself to a self-indulgent lifestyle that is devoid of meaning in the worst degrees.

Well, whether I will ever dance again, is not the question here. It may be more along the lines of “Are you up to the dance?” LOL, there are many degrees of joy in life, many levels of ability or skill, and many degrees of need that just seems to be either unfulfilled or forgotten in our lives. Who we are, on any given day, may be gauged by many factors; but I am thinking that as I grow older, I can still jump that six feet across those lines, just like Marjorie back in the day. If my physical ability on any given day, matches my mental agility (we must be careful there… with a chuckle), why not take the challenge from time to time; if when all is said and done, nothing amiss is taking place.

If you have read my blogs you know that I live on the edge, and walk most of the time on the edge. You also know that statement carries with it so much breadth in meaning, that it can be scary on lots of fronts. Do I ever get nervous or afraid? Why yes, we all do at one level or another. But I, fortunately, do not walk alone. Not everyone is so privileged to be in my circumstance or situation in life. I have a loving wife and family, and a faith that has carried me through the best of times and the worst of times. Actually, there is little that does not make us nervous, as life drops it worst in our laps, but with love and support, we seem to make it through. As we are taken to the edge, or walk near the edge our minds may be flooded with doubts of all kinds and that “is” the norm. Circumstances confronting us, decisions to be made, and the harshest of all scenarios, being deteriorating health conditions, can wear us down, but it is just another walk near the edge. My reoccurring statement, that you may have read before, rings true at all times; ““Living near the edge is not bad, it has moments of testing, moments of required courage and moments of extreme joy... It's all in how we define the view from there.” So, can you still dance to the music? Life is not a continuous funeral dirge; it is more often be a call to action in response to a still lively heart-beat! Go get your groove back, if it is among the missing… it’s good for you soul… I’ve been there and done that!