Of the many wonders that our aging population enjoys today – I’m not talking about pacemakers, heart transplants, new knees or hips – I’m talking about those pill boxes in which we keep our daily doses of medications. These boxes serve as time capsules while organizing our medications.
How many of us of riper years have arisen to meet the day and are suddenly unsure just what day it is we are meeting. We have only to go to where our daily medications are kept, and we are immediately oriented to the day. This is just a starting point, of course; we’re left to our own resources to determine the month and the year. I can’t overestimate the comfort that my pill box has brought me, as aging has tended to make me forgetful of small details. I don’t berate myself anymore because I haven’t a clue what day it is. The day’s right there holding my Nexium.
There are other maddening things about growing older. One is how names elude us. We find ourselves talking about people we’ve known for years whom we remember exactly where and when we met, the vacations we took together, maybe even their birthdays and anniversaries- but their names remain perversely hidden from us for reasons I cannot understand. Why, when we recall so much about these folk would only their names be lost to us? Only God knows. Considering the Ancient of Days is even older than Methuselah it is miraculous that age has never diminished his cognitive functioning. When Moses asked God his name, God knew his name spot on.
When I turned seventy, my brother sent me a pill box for storing daily medications and a blood pressure monitor. He likes to be cute and mess with me. I already had my own pill box. The monitor, however, I’ve taken to using periodically for scientific experiments that examine clinically how my own mind-body connection works.
I place the band on my arm, start the monitor and think of someone I can’t stand. As I’m thinking of the miscreant, the monitor hisses and whines, the numbers on the screen escalate and the band grows tight. The final reading is high, way high. I’ll then think about someone I love, reset the monitor and take another reading. Blood pressure descends. These experiments have been revealing.
I’ve noticed, for instance, how an elevated reading drops more slowly than a lower reading ascends. Our bodies and minds take longer to shed the fallout from stresses and irritations than they do to reap the sedative cardiovascular effects of loving-kindness. I suppose these clinical trials reveals nothing that most of us don’t already know; it takes only seconds to get ticked off but hours to cool down.
Resentments and personal dislikes are tenacious. They often fill many of our wandering thoughts; irksome relatives and acquaintances, slow drivers, tailgaters and telephone solicitors, and of course, the lady ahead of you checking out her groceries at the supermarket – all of which keep pressure on, or more specifically, high.
At the supermarket there’s always a dear old lady (probably younger than I am – occasionally an old man) checking her groceries out. She’s misplaces her glasses. She’s sure she brought coupons but can’t find them. She rummages through her purse, finds the glasses, in a few minutes the coupons, but now can’t find her pen to make out a check. The checkout lady finds her one. The line lengthens. Finally, she moves on.
It is written that they do serve, who only stand and wait but I must say it raises havoc with my cardiovascular system to have to wait like this and I’m not sure just how this waiting is a service of any kind. On second thought, circumstance like these may have important life lessons to teach.
We sleep a third of our lives away. We accept that as a fact of life. It occurs to me that waiting also consumes a huge piece of life no matter what we are about.
I wait at traffic lights, for company to arrive, for mail to come, during air travel, for ideas to germinate, for the rain to stop, for supper, for doctor’s appointments – the list is endless. In the military, soldiers say they hurry up only to wait. In our electronic era, designed to minimize waiting, if you’ve ever called for clarification of tax or billing issues over the phone, it’s all about waiting. While listening to canned music and being reassured every five minutes or so (this time a canned voice) that someone will be with you shortly, you know you’re in for the long haul.
Having observed this I make this distinction: the waiting that circumstances impose on me is irksome. The waiting I elect to do in leisure, I enjoy.
Perhaps in the big picture, not knowing the day is no big deal. Whatever day it is, we’ll probably spend most of it waiting for one thing or another, anyway. My clinical trials with the blood pressure monitor suggest that entertaining kind thoughts and gently surrendering ourselves to the flow of time are best for keeping my blood pressure down.
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