A Senior Citizen Not Only Talks the Talk, but Walks the Walk!

A Senior Citizen Not only Talks the Talk, but Walks the Walk

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 2005

Note: This is written especially for the initial issue of Health and Fitness Excellence: The Magazine of Performance Leadership.

“Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as the pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.”

Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784)

“As soon as you are born, you are old enough to die.”

Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976)

My message is not for senior citizens such as myself, as they have pretty much completed the design of their destiny. My message is for young people whose heads are turned with every new fad and every new advertised stimulant to a more fulfilling life. I’ve never listened to such nonsense.

I grew up when it was popular to smoke cigarettes, yet I did not smoke, to get smashed as soon as you turned twenty-one, yet I did not drink, and to burn the candle at both ends because “tomorrow you could die.” I heeded that message but did not see it in anyway justifying dissipation.

Young people are confronted every day with new ways to destroy themselves. This is aided by the idea that school should be fun, not stressful; that work should be fun, not energy sapping; that life should be fun, not full of pain, stress, struggle, disappointment and sorrow. Unfortunately, there is no growth, no maturity, no discipline, and no self-realization without embracing these obstacles.

My life is proof that you don’t have to be a body builder to have a functionally healthy body; nor do you have to be a celebrated athlete to have all your working parts responsive to your call, I might add, even at an advanced age.

An important quality in life is not hope but courage, the courage to make suitable choices consistent with your constitution. It is not good fortune but discipline that carries us to fulfillment. It is not a lot of highs and lows but continuing effort that leads to a productive life.

What is killing the mind, the heart, and the body is our lifestyle choices.

There would be little diabetes if people didn’t have their bodies full of poison filled fatty tissue. There would be little or no lung cancer if the air were more pure and people didn’t smoke. There would be less kidney or liver failure if people didn’t consume excessive amounts of alcohol. There would be far less colon cancer if people had more roughage in their diets. There would be little or no brain damage if people didn’t abuse recreational drugs. There would be little or no venereal disease if people practiced continence outside of marriage. Safe sex is an oxymoron.

Young people have a sense of immortality and are restless to seek relief of their raging hormones. I can only share with you my experience.

The Walk Starts Early

At my advanced age, I maintain the same body weight of high school of 190 pounds on a six-four frame. I’ve never been a smoker or drinker, mainly because I came from an Irish clan and could see what it had done to my relatives.

When I was in the US Navy on the flagship of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, my white hat shipmates would hit the beach and get smashed, while I would go on an educational tour. I was twenty-two, and called a “culture vulture,” perhaps because I was already a college graduate. I had a hunger for learning more about Europe and my ancestors. While on the ship, I often lifted weights on the fantail, did my duty in the hospital division, read, and typed “The Sojourn of a Sailor,” a collection of impressions of Europe in the late 1950s. Navy chow, the best in the world, kept me fit, in good health and spirits.

As a boy, we were relatively poor but we ate well. It was important to my da. He had a saying, whatever he ate we ate, and he liked to eat lean meat, fish, poultry, eggs, butter, vegetables, fresh fruit, and cereals. My mother canned preserves of tomatoes, apples, grapes and currents grown in our garden. My da liked whole milk with the cream on the top, fresh asparagus from the garden, and fresh baked bread with every meal.

An excellent diet doesn’t always insure good health, however, as he died three days after turning fifty of multiple myeloma, a form of leukemia, the same disease that took the life of Sam Walton of Wal-Mart. It is mentioned here because his death changed my life. Henceforth life was to be taken seriously, but not myself. I wasn’t going to worry about what people thought of my choices or actions.

Dying young like that, always pushing the Sisyphus rock up the hill only to be buried by it, again and again, made a deep impression on me. I decided that I would live my life as if it could be lost at any moment.

Life is a series of choices for us all, but it is easy to make choices when you have a resolute mind. You are not driven by what others deem important but what you feel is relevant, and self-affirming. I planned to be neither a prisoner of my appetites nor ignorant of the damage they cause me. The key word was vigilance.

Some might say I have had an easy life, and I would agree to a point, but that has been because I have enjoyed my own company, have not been intimidated by being alone, have never had a need to belong, nor have I felt a sense of loss when not being included. For this disposition, I have also enjoyed a life free of major illness, which has allowed me to function at a very active level to this very moment.

Although not inclined to be a social person, by the accident of my several professions, I have lived and worked throughout the world; have been a student, chemist, salesman, executive, consultant, professor, author, lecturer, entrepreneur, book publisher, poet, researcher, psychologist, and journalist. I have also been a voracious reader all my life.

People say they never find time to read. That is because reading gets short shrift when it comes to setting priorities. I always have a book with me wherever I go, and read three to five books a week, and have been doing this for more than fifty years. My reading is as eclectic as are my professions, as a lifelong learner. My interests are as diverse as mythology and mathematics, philosophy and poetry, mystery novels and metaphysical tracts.

Athletics is a socialization experience. Were it not for this, I would imagine I would have been even more reclusive. I played organized sports in baseball, basketball, football, and track from grammar school through high school, or from the age of eight to eighteen. Sports taught me about following rules, respecting boundaries, accepting penalties, also the thrill of winning and the agony of losing, the embarrassment of a bad performance and the exhilaration of a good one, and always the many benefits derived from being disciplined.

The discipline appealed to me more than the competition. I still love the feel of a baseball, basketball or tennis ball in my hands. To this day my heart sings when I see the magic of some athlete hitting, catching, throwing, running with, or dribbling some kind of ball. Having been an athlete, I know it takes high intelligence to be outstanding.

What I have trouble understanding is how such well-honed performers can contaminate their systems with recreational drugs, nicotine or alcohol, or how they can sully their reputations by gambling or becoming promiscuous. It would seem they are attracted to the Sisyphus dilemma.

I was a good high school student-athlete, but elected to take an academic rather than an athletic scholarship when I attended college. The athletic scholarship was a full-ride, meaning the payment of all fees, while the academic scholarship paid for only tuition. I don’t regret the choice, but worked my way through school, never skipping classes, and even taking on extra sessions, such as participating in laboratory experiments. It was, after all, my money and I wanted to get the biggest bang for my buck.

As a consequence, I studied hard and graduated Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. I never joined a social fraternity, but did Fence on the varsity fencing team. I was also a member of Phi Eta Sigma, freshman scholastic honorary, and Omicron Delta Kappa, leadership honorary, as well as winner of the Freshman Athletic Trophy for having the highest grade point for a freshman athlete.

Someone reading this might ask what has this to do with health or performance? It is a fair question. I am sharing my history and the benefits I have derived over seven decades living in a certain way. They have blessed me with good health and have allowed me to remain still actively involved in writing books, publishing articles, giving speeches, playing tennis, walking, and reading the same as I did as an eight year old, eighteen year old, twenty-eight year old, and so on.

It has been a health and human performance regiment that has worked for me, and variations of it could work for you, you that are just entering the workforce, you who are just turning twenty, thirty, forty, and so on, and also for you who have been led to believe that life is as it will be the rest of your journey. Not so. Not true. Not if you have the gumption to make choices.

I published my first book when I was thirty-seven. My next book was not published until I was fifty-seven. Six books and hundreds of articles have followed. I was thirty-nine when I went back to school for six years, year around, to earn my master’s and doctor’s degrees, while supporting a family of four children ages 9, 11, 13, and 15 by consulting on the side.

Health and human performance don’t stop with a commencement address, and a degree in your vitae. Commencement means to initiate, to begin, to get started, and it is never too late to get started, ever!

There is no job that pays you too much that you can’t quit it and start over. If the job makes you sick and down, depressed and angry, it is probably killing you. It is the wrong job in the wrong place with the wrong people, and it might even be the wrong profession as well. Forget how much time and money you have invested in it. Learning transfers.

I was in my mid-thirties making the equivalent of $250,000 a year, paying no taxes, because I was living abroad, and was miserable when I decided to quit, becoming a dropout, a new term then, taking a sabbatical. Life made no sense to me anymore. My boss said, “How can you do this to us when we have done so much for you?” I answered, “If I wasn’t doing my job, you would fire me. The company isn’t meeting my needs. I am firing the company.” It was that simple.

I share this with you because I believe if I had stayed I wouldn’t be able to write these words because I would be long dead. I was living a lie in South Africa. That society and its system made no sense to me, nor did company practices in collusion with it.

Choice is a powerful tool that is often contaminated by the rationale of justification. Friends thought I had lost my mind, when I knew that I had actually found it. My boss said that I would never again know such power or affluence and he was right, even more so than he thought.

Heidegger said it well, “The day we are born, we are old enough to die.” Imagine what a profound invitation that is to live fully every day, not to worry what others think or do, but pay attention to the drummer of your own heart.

When I asked my son-in-law what I should write about here, he said, “Write about yourself. You are a poster boy of your generation. You don’t look your age. You still walk the walk and talk the talk. You are testimony of what is possible.”

“But won’t that be perceived as a bit solipsistic?” I countered.

He smiled, “Only you think in such words.” Then he added, “Yeah, I suppose some well think it’s a bit much, but they should know you, and try to keep up with you. You are much!”

It so happens my son-in-law is the founder of reVim ©, a most successful company in the science of anti-aging. Its clinic has a whole regiment of medical approaches to regaining vigor and the vitality of your younger years. When I asked if he thought I should sign up for the clinic, he laughed, “You’ve got to be kidding, right?”


About the author: Dr. Fisher is author of several books including Six Silent Killers: Management’s Greatest Challenge (1998) and In the Shadow of the Courthouse: Memoir of the 1940s Written as a Novel (2003). Near Journey’s End: Can the Planet Earth Survive Self-indulgent Man? and Who Put You In Plato’s Cave? are scheduled for publication in 2006. Check out his website: www.peripateticphilosopher.com and his blog: peripateticphilosopher.com. More information is available on reVim © on www.reVim.com.