What's Past Is Prolog

With each passing year, we can look back at what we have done to shape our future. We will become whatever we have set ourselves up to become, whether that is active and healthy, or sedentary and unhealthy. Please don't tell yourself the lie that you are too busy to do the things that will keep you active and healthy well into your "golden years". If you are too sedentary now, those years may not be so golden. They may have you functioning like a rusty hinge: not too smoothly, and not without loud groans of protest. So what will you make time for today?

In order to just maintain our present level of mobility, we MUST do what we CAN do. If you can climb a flight of stairs, then by all means you would be well advised to skip the elevator and climb that flight of stairs. If you can walk for 30 or 45 minutes at a fairly brisk pace, then you better make time to walk. You do not need to train for Olympic events, or try to set some age group distance record. Just discipline yourself to stay active now, so that five or ten, or twenty years from now you can still be active.

I have taken time to talk with many people in the course of the last ten years who are now disabled in one way or another. Some are no longer able to work and live on a disability income. Others work part time, or even full time with constant pain because they need the income. It is sad just how many of those people were very inactive for twenty or thirty years before they became disabled, and not a few of them now believe that at least some of their present health issues directly relate to that sedentary lifestyle. Those who were sedentary by choice for most of their adult life are now forced to be sedentary by declining health. It is because of those people that I began this blog and it is because of them that I made a firm commitment to myself to stay as active as possible right now.

Some of the folks I was referring to in the last paragraph became disabled thru some sudden accident or illness over which they had no control at all. But those who were active before then, often were the same ones who worked hardest at achieving whatever recovery was possible, and have again found ways to be active within their current limits. So even they have benefitted from staying in motion. I know this is a misuse of this law of physics, but I think you will agree that it seems to apply: bodies in motion tend to stay in motion. Humans who are active tend to remain active. So, what will you do today in order to have a better tomorrow?