Yeah, I Don’t Do That Any More

Some of my greatest childhood memories are of the experiences I had trudging through the snow in the woods behind my childhood home. If you saw me now, you would shake your head and think that I was delusional – that I spent too much time in the sun, but it’s true. My body has never been perfect, but it was once a lot better.

As a kid, I rode my bicycle for miles, just to prove I could. I snow skied, water skied and golfed. I delivered newspapers on foot, through all kinds of weather. I climbed trees, rode horses and ran, although I never liked running, even when I could do it.

The doctors told me that my future was grim. That, as my body aged, it was going to be difficult for me to be as active. That I’ll probably need crutches, a cane, even a wheelchair. I shrugged my shoulders and went hunting in the woods behind my house. They didn’t know what they were talking about.

That was a long time ago.

I went snow skiing as a senior in high school. I took the ski lift all the way to the top of Keystone Mountain in Colorado’s Summit County, where a long easy run lay ahead of me. In prior years, I had flown down that run time and again, knowing where to hit my marks to maximize my speed and excitement. That day, however, I crashed in the first 100 yards, struggled to get up and crashed again just a few yards farther. My dad trailed behind, stopping just upslope to make sure I was OK. I shook off the first crash as the consequence of not skiing in the past three years, but he and I knew. It was the first crash of many, and, when I finally reached the bottom of the mountain, I took off the skis for the last time.

I experienced a similar reality about a year later while hunting pheasants in a corn field. Every downed stalk seemed to grab my legs, and my feet found all the holes. It was the last field I ever walked. When I swung a golf club three years ago, I learned that golf too was something that I could no longer do.

Most of us are fortunate enough to sail through most of our lives with nearly all of our physical and mental abilities. Sure, maybe we can’t run a five-minute mile any longer, but that doesn’t keep us from going on a run. Because it we are able to do most everything we want to do, we don’t fully appreciate everything we can do. That’s unfortunate.

When something or someone is taken from you, your world narrows and your attention focuses on only the most important things. It’s why family and friends gather at funerals, and renew relationships. It’s why amputees run marathons and soldiers form life-long friendships with each other. They’ve felt loss and realize it can happen at any time.

In loss, there is life. Loss hurts. It’s supposed to hurt, but we recover, and we recover stronger, because we learn that life goes on, and though it might not be as easy as we want it to be, it’s as beautiful as we make it.

A few weeks ago, some longtime friends invited Lynda and me to join them for dinner in Omaha’s Old Market. The Old Market is an incredibly vibrant and exciting place to have dinner and socialize, but I typically avoid it, especially on the weekends, because it invariably involves an uncomfortable amount of walking for me. That wasn’t the case 20 years ago. With those very friends, I went up and down the streets and through crowded bars, never really letting my handicap get in the way.

That’s not an option any more. Even with Lynda dropping me off before parking the car, I had to walk farther than I wanted and then climb some stairs to get to the restaurant. There wasn’t going to be any bar hopping for me that night or any other night for that matter. I’ve accepted that and choose to focus on the things that I can do, like having dinner with treasured friends from the past.

With a healthy set of legs, the incredible dinner would have been just part of a night that would have involved stops at other clubs and restaurants. I would have enjoyed that night too, but I probably wouldn’t have appreciated just being there as much.

Too many of us assume that life will always be easy, and that allows us to take simple things for granted. It’s easy to skip that evening walk with your wife, but what if you were to lose the opportunity tomorrow or the next week or the next year or the next decade? Will you look at the missed opportunity with regret?

Don’t let something be taken from you before you appreciate it.

-- Mitch Arnold