Tigger is getting Older…

All my life I have loved the Winnie the Pooh stories, and have taken so many fundamental lessons from them on how to live and be a better person (as well as plenty of tears for the more epiphanous parallels some have offered). The whole gang has played a role, not just in my development to the person I am today, but in the stories we tell each other in our family. Tam and I have often used Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and Tigger references to describe to each other our emotions or the current state of our family.

If you don’t remember the Tigger song, click here, or on this picture of the little guy for the video link. Its worth a watch anyway, just for the fun of it!

I always used to feel like this.

My top was always made out of rubber, evidenced by the number of times I have bounced my head off the ground and jumped back up to continue to play.

My bottom was always made out of springs and I reveled in that. It was a source of pride, and gave me confidence to achieve it all in my life. In many ways I still do feel Tiggery (particularly the part about being cuddly and sweet), but I do realize that my springs are a bit rusty now. I can say that I have felt some changes in the springy, bouncy, and pouncy areas as the years have gone by (and, just possibly, I may be slightly less loaded with vim and with vigor) .

I am getting older.

I am aware of it in the strangest ways now: I see my father’s reflection in a glance in the mirror, have the occasional curmudgeonly thought or turn of phrase, or take a frighteningly longer time to find a word or a name in my head. I find myself less accepting when kids do stupid shit around me, and I tend to walk away muttering about it when they do. I get furious when they won’t move over on the sidewalk and make Tam and I step off into the mud, but then I have a small stab of resentment when they do show me respect for being older (call me sir, but don’t you dare call me sir).

I feel it in my physicality. Like the lack of the spring that I used to revel in, the diminished clarity of eye that I once had (I use the flashlight on my phone a lot more now to read menus in dark restaurants), and I don’t have the inexhaustible well of energy I have always been able to draw from (tigger loves his naps more and more).

For the record, I don’t consider myself old yet.

But I aint exactly young anymore.

Tigger don’t spring like he used to (yeah, yeah, we went over that already, sorry). This is the tough one for me. For anyone who knows me well, or has known me for a while, they most likely know that I have always been a physical person. The problem is, while I have other traits, a big part of my identity is embodied in my physical abilities (not my appearance though, I am starting to look weird as I get older, but I have no concern for that, it is just funny). This is an adjustment that I already find myself making. I feel it, daily (it is much harder to get out of bed in the mornings after I play too hard the day before). My body now makes strange creaking and clunking noises (it sounds like an out-of-balance washing machine when I am paddling my surfboard), and it often seems to disagree with my brain on where vertical and horizontal exist. I suffer minor, annoying injuries more often now, and as I get older I know that much more serious injuries lurk in the dangerous places where moderation is ignored .

When I was a kid I was immortal and ageless. I remember thinking if I could just make it to the year two-thousand I would be lucky. I would be thirty-two. It was inconceivable. It was incredibly short-sighted and limiting. Put simply, at that time I was a self-absorbed, disrespectful little shit. You could not be less present than I was then. It was the deeper look into the infinite void of mortality that made me aware of my shortcomings. There was a beautiful and important (and recent) point that I crossed in my life that I understood and embraced the end of my self as inevitable, but I am just now starting to accept the idea of old age. This one is equally important.

Now I see the future clearly, and not just a piece of it but the whole thing, all the way to the grave. The things I find important have certainly changed with that change in perspective. Now I want to be a whole person. I want to live my life (the rest of it) honestly, fully, and with wholesome presence and love. And I do want to continue being physical, as well as I can. The idea of becoming a bitter old man, facing my final years with the knowledge of a life of regret, of an eternity squandered, is terrifying. My search is for the proper path, the way that I will walk the remaining years towards old age, and of each footstep that will carry me on that path to accept and embrace the older self that I am and will continue to become.

I just want to be the best old Tigger I can be.