​One of the things you’re not really taught is how the aging process affects you. When you are young, you look at people who are past retirement age (more or less), and think to yourself, “Man, they’re old.” They look older, so you categorize them that way in your mind.
 
You don’t think about how they got there, or the changes they’ve undergone mentally, physically, spiritually once they’ve gotten past the age of (pick one) 60, 70, 75. The phrase, “Old age isn’t for the timid” starts to become more real when you begin falling into those age brackets.

You must give a nod to how your body/mind/spirit are evolving (or de-evolving). Recognizing change is important step towards continued growth.
 
For example, as the days grow shorter, the sun rises later, and as I walk up our long dark driveway early in the morning, it has gotten harder and harder for me to see the past few years. If there is no moon to light the way, it is easy for me to step off the driveway, lose my footing, sprain an ankle. While not catastrophic, the potential for injury is worrisome. Five years ago, this was not a worry.

So, as the earth rotates and the sun rises later and later, I strap a light to my forehead, one of those jogger lights so I can see the asphalt and safely stroll west to pick up our daily newspapers. A comfort zone is created. When winter arrives, the light keeps me from slipping on ice.
 
Night eyesight is one of those things you notice upon reaching the age brackets noted above. Many years ago, my younger brother sang the praises of yellow glasses advertised for old codgers to cut down on glare while driving at night. All those years ago, I had no issues. Two or three years ago, that changed and I purchased the glasses, now using them sporadically when it is raining and dark.

The glasses don’t change your world. But, yeah, they do help. With road glare reduced you see more clearly and have more confidence driving. Who would have thought?
 
I play baseball (the real deal) in two leagues, one for players who are 55 and over and one for players ages 62 and over. Suffice to say that just about everybody on both those rosters nurses injuries in the course of the season. One could argue we should stop being stupid and discontinue playing baseball, but that would take away the fun and challenge.

So, we soldier on with a nod to age. This is going to hurt. We’re going to compensate for that. We can’t do this anymore. We have to change how we run, throw, bat to address the limitations of our bodies.
 
On the negative side, you can view this deterioration with sadness (and there is that), but isn’t all of life and adaptation to circumstances?  The well-lived life is accomplished by adapting to circumstances and figuring out the next step. Learn, then live differently.
 
On the positive side, when you nod to the aging process you fuel whatever comes next in your life. It leads to new things, friendships, events, activities. When you can’t whip a baseball to the plate, maybe horseshoes are your next venue. When tennis causes an elbow problem, perhaps pickleball is in your future.
 
Regardless of what you nod to there’s something new out there waiting, something that sends you down an unexpected path. The journey keeps you guessing.

​For those of you who read this column regularly, you would likely categorize me as an incrementalist. Through small positive actions, change occurs. There is no overnight transformation, whether individually or societally.
 
I don’t expect miracles. Those who believe revolutions are the answer only kid themselves.
 
When a positive change occurs, it fuels my imagination and puts me in a better place. This occurred a few weeks back when I bought my supply of salsa.
 
At Costco, they sell my brand in a two-pack. It has been sold for years in plastic containers, something that irritates me to no end. When a product can be processed in a glass container, I’m puzzled why plastic is used. That answer is plastic is cheaper (without considering all the environmental impacts of plastics not decomposing around the world, choking animals, waterways and trees, and breaking down into micro-plastics that we unsuccessfully digest, causing who knows what to our bodies).
 
Despite the dual plastic containers, I purchased the salsa because I liked it so much. Turned my head the other way, recycled the plastic containers and hoped that down the line they got repurposed into some other plastic product.
 
Then, those few weeks ago, the salsa materialized in a two-pack of glass containers, held FIRMLY together by a tough cardboard attachment. YEAH! I was jazzed.
 
It was one of those signs that someone in a position of authority got it. They recognize that the materials they were using aren’t good for the long-term health of the planet and CHOSE to make a decision that a safer alternative be used. A thank you to that individual or team that drove the decision.
 
Jokingly, when I brought the salsa home, I told my wife that someone finally listened to me for once. My ranting paid off.
 
Eradicating plastic from product lines is going to be a very long haul. This corporate decision is not likely to be emulated by others. Each of us can take steps to fuel the process though.

Given the choice, purchase similar products in glass bottles rather than plastic. You may pay a few cents more. In the long run, you are pushing the manufacturers in the direction to meet your consumer choice.
 
It's hard to justify putting more plastic into the environment. The other day, I watched as containers of Gatorade were unloaded to stock a concession stand. Cases and cases of plastic, held together at the bottle cap by more six-pack plastic rings, encased in plastic sheets. Plastic, plastic, plastic.
 
At a BARE MINIMUM, two-thirds of that plastic could be eliminated, by securing the bottles in cardboard and attaching the bottles together by a non-plastic neck attachment. All one needs to do to see the over-use of plastic bottles is take a look at the garbage at any major event – a concert, ballgame, state fair – and the overflowing of plastic bottles in the garbage containers.
 
The Costco salsa glass two-pack isn’t going to change the world. The salsa company’s decision to eliminate plastic in their production process was a good one. They’re moving us in the right direction. I hope many more take notice.

​What’s new to you might be old to someone else. It depends on how much you keep up with culture.
 
A few months back, I began watching YouTube music videos that hit my feed after I listened to bands that I knew. At some point, Maren Morris came up. I tuned in. The first song was hip. I pulled up the next. It was catchy. The third one had me humming along.

This went on for multiple songs and I started to listen to her while I tapped away on the computer doing work. The lyrics stayed with me. I thought I’d discovered a new singer.

But, it was only new to me. Looking more deeply, I saw that these “recent” hits weren’t so recent. She was actually “new” in terms of her songs I heard closer to eight years ago. Still, I went around telling people I’d found a new singer I liked.
 
This seems to happen with a solid degree of regularity. I don’t follow music much. I often ask my adult offspring to give me a CD they like for my birthday or Christmas, and that helps me update to today’s world. YouTube works similarly, but it seems that by the time I find out about a band or artist, their ship sailed years past.
 
As my enjoyment of Morris’s songs and music grew, YouTube sent me more similar artists, including Lindsay Ell. Loved her guitar work, and how she riffed some of her favorite songs by other rock stars.  I’d discovered another new one.

Of course not. She, like Morris, had her core heyday seven or so years ago.
 
These two cases got me thinking how behind the times I am concerning popular music in general. If you don’t follow something closely, very quickly your knowledge becomes outdated. It’s difficult to be a lukewarm follower of top hits.
 
Years ago, I thought I’d discovered the band “Linkin’ Park.” The pain, searing vocals, hypnotic beats and rapping lyrics hit me hard (in a good way) and I had our kids purchase CD’s for me in the 2015-2016 time period. “Man, this a monumental new band,” I thought at the time, until I checked it out on Wikipedia and found they, too, were new probably 15 years earlier.  Somehow I’d missed it all.
 What’s new to you? Is it music released this year or something you discovered recently that has already been around and many would consider “old” or “outdated?”
 
Chatting with a friend last week on this topic, he mentioned a band from 1996 to a coworker, who in response said, “Dude, I wasn’t even alive then.” That’s another head slammer when it comes to looking back on music and how we perceive whether something is new or not.
 
When I started watching the television show, “Breaking Bad,” it was new to me, but old to most of their fans. Many of my friends would wax about how cutting edge and groundbreaking it was, but I didn’t get around to recording and watching it until it was in its next-to-last season. It was new to me then.
 
And, damn, it was good, really really good. So new, so fresh that I was captivated and depressed when they ended the series.

I’ve never gone back and watched the first few seasons. I don’t want to lose the “new” experience I had by watching the “old” stuff. Yeah, I’d probably like it, but I’d also have to figure out how to categorize it, and then my head would explode. We’re all kinda dated when it comes down to it. You can only stay up with so much.

​Over the past four years I’ve had the fortune to watch a good friend pick up the game of golf and grow immensely. He mocked the sport in discussions and then one day he called and said he wanted to give it a try. I’m not sure why, but I’m glad he made that decision and asked me to help.
 
Whether you are a golfer or not, it’s really not a good idea for a friend to teach you (ask any wife who has a husband try and teach her). I’m not qualified to help a newcomer figure out the perfect stance, grip or swing plane. But, since my buddy (we’ll call him J) reached out, I felt I’d give it my best shot to simplify the game as he started. I didn’t think he’d keep at it given his past skepticism.

From that first day – when I showed him how to grip the club and place his feet – the art of teaching him (and his receptivity to learning) has been an ongoing joy in my life. He swung and missed multiple times that first day, like most golfers, and in the weeks that ensued as we headed from the practice range to the course. He also hit the ball solidly a few times, yanked a few to the left, shanked a few to the right, and rolled a few down the hill of the driving range, while tunneling huge divots that sent turf flying.
 
He was immediately hooked. I was surprised, but kept working with him, discussing that putts on the green were simply about speed and direction. Get those two things right, and you can turn into a good putter.
 
Very early on we both learned that when he connected, his swing (patterned from his baseball-playing days) and strength could help him launch bombs. Within those first few rounds, he outdrove me despite me hitting one of my better tee shots of the day. I applauded, beaming at what he could do.
 
There are many nuances to golf. Terminology must be learned. You have to understand how uphill, sidehill and downhill lies affect your ball trajectory. Hitting out of sand or rough is quite different from a pristine lie on the fairway. Depending on the distance of your next shot and the wind direction, condition of the course, and even the time of year when you are playing all affect club selection, how far the ball will fly and roll, and how you want to hit the ball. He bought into all this, slowly developing an affinity for recognizing and adjusting to the various shots.
 
As one year turned into year two, three and four, he grew his game. He laughed, he enjoyed new courses.  He brought new friends to the sport. And, finally, one day he cursed. That showed me he had made it. He’d gotten good enough where he had expectations, and knew he could do better, and a bad shot frustrated him. That day was amusing as I watched and listened, and I told him later how he’d crossed a threshold.
 
The joy of playing, being outdoors, enjoying time with your friends was still paramount, but he’d reached that next level. He adopted golf slang. After a point, he spoke golf slang fluently. That, too, was a special moment as he talked the language. We were on the same page.
 
J does not watch golf on TV. It bores him. I get it, but continue to encourage him to watch because he can learn by watching. He likes the continual challenge of playing, improving his swing and lowering his score. I watch his score improve on an annual basis, celebrating his birdies, breaking 100 on a round, or crushing a drive that rises majestically on the last hole of the day.
 
Despite his embracement of all things golf, J still has the ability to make me smile at some of the more subtle things he’s still picking up. Just recently, he texted me, “What’s a shotgun start?” For those of you who are golfers, that’s a quick and easy answer. For the uninitiated, it means playing where every group tees off at the same time, but on a different hole, so everyone finishes at approximately the same time. This is done for fundraising events, and typically you play in team scrambles. I explained this to him, and was not sure he understood the full concept.
 
Something about him not knowing what a shotgun start reminded me that he’s still fresh at the sport, still learning, still loving it, eagerly picking up the nuances. There’s a lot to be said for that. It would be nice to keep that perspective in all our endeavors.