One Thing or Another Column: Comparatively Speaking

Narration provided by Wondervox

By Mark McNease

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Five years after writing this, it’s still true that so many of the conversations I have with friends and peers is about comparing—not so much to one-up each other with our aches, pains, and fears about our future health issues, but to simply share these things we have in common. Perhaps ‘age is just a number,’ as the platitude insists, but the body has a different opinion.

What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve survived enough of it, and maybe the time simply comes when the scars we show each other are the result of putting so many decades behind us.

I remember hearing people my age talk about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes from knowing you won’t die young. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves with having outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.

Aging has its own vocabulary. Despite my determination never to learn its language, I find it inescapable. When my rotator cuff is torn, or my knuckles are complaining, or my walk has more of a waddle than a jaunt, I’m forced to express it with an age-appropriateness I’d once dreaded. Even medication gets tossed into the conversational mix, something I had been convinced would never happen. I had no interest in spending my Sunday evening filling a pill box with the days of the week abbreviated on it: S-M-T-W, ad infinitum. I’ve managed to stave that off, taking my two prescriptions directly from their bottles, or putting them in a small plastic container that could hold gold shavings instead of a generic cholesterol drug and a tablet for acid reflux.

Now, when I’m with my peers, the topic can just as easily be a comparison of aches and ailments as the breaking news of the day. My arm hurts, his back has gone out. My vision is blurrier than usual, she has a cyst. We all have something causing us pain and worry, and while we may not spend too much time contemplating our own mortality, the finite nature of the bodies we inhabit is impossible to ignore.

Still, I’ll take the trade-offs of a long life over the interrupted potential of a short one. I’d rather be around to talk about a stiff neck and a breakthrough in denture care than to be remembered by the people I’ve left behind. It’s absolutely worth it, all this comparing of notes. We eventually get around to discussing the sunrise, or our plans for a trip somewhere, or how much we love each other—comparatively speaking. Sometimes an ache or pain is just life reminding us we’re alive, and it’s time to get on with it.