Introspective Elbow

Haven’t been rock climbing for the past two months, my right elbow has been tweaky and the doc says it’s tendonitis. I’ve had two rehab sessions this week, doing two more next week and two more after that. They use this ultrasound wand on my elbow, and then put this medicine on a patch with an electrode on it and zap me with voltage so the medicine gets sucked down into my flesh. With all this I expect to be better in no time. I hope so, the lack of climbing is killing me. Used to be when I had a few hours to spare I’d naturally think of getting to the climbing gym, now that option is not available. A really big part of my life has been taken away. It’s pretty sucky. But it can’t bother me too much. I could be much worse off, I could be much worse afflicted, I could be not living in the wealthiest country in the most technologically advanced time in history. And the reduced mobility just gives an inkling of what’s to come, for everybody, really. As our bodies age, there will be point where we’re less strong, less flexible, less capable of doing something we really love; we all know it’s going to happen, how we deal with it determines the kind of life we’ll live. And the increased frailty is not even the scary part – losing mental acuity is what really terrifies most of us. And, again, it’s something we know we’ll have to manage someday, it’s something we may be seeing our parents go through right now. Yup, it sucks. And we deal with it. The very first Sandman comic I ever read told me something so profound I’ve held it at the center of my worldview ever since. It’s when Morpheus is tagging along with Death as she goes about her day, collecting people to her. The young, the old, every race, every nation, she comes for all of us, and when a newborn baby asks her “That’s it? Is that all I get?” she says “Yes. You get what everyone gets: a lifetime.” Whenever I think about being healthy, or my body falling apart; or having a fulfilling career and life of meaning, or stuttering along in frustrated mediocrity; or finding a true love, or losing that love, I think yeah any and all of this may be my life. I get what everyone else gets. A lifetime.