There is a saying ‘people who wear tracksuit pants have given up on life.’ Well, I wear tracksuit pants.
A sage said, ‘most people die long before they’re dead’. I couldn’t unhear this, and in many ways this axiom has defined my older life.
I came to believe my feelings of resigned acceptance are just part of my ageing process.
For many of us, life doesn’t end suddenly – it just fades away. Over the past decade, I have gradually been losing my virility, tumescence, muscle strength, sense of taste and smell, visual acuity and hearing. I began ‘smudging’ life, because I could not read what was in front of me. But, lo and behold, $7 glasses brought the world back into sharp focus!
When I was in my 60s, I was on a filming expedition, and with my video camera I jumped off the back of a truck about a metre to the ground.
As I dropped I sensed my knees weren’t able to take it, and sure enough I collapsed, tucked the camera into my chest and rolled on the ground like an old man. Since then, through my 70s, I have gradually been losing the strength in my knees.
They say men in relationships live at least five years longer, because men tend not to look after themselves.
And it took years of my partner pushing me to go and get hearing aids because my growing deafness was driving her nuts.
As I have been losing my hearing I have been developing tinnitus, which is like high-pitched cicadas screaming in my head.
So I went to a local audiologist and got Grade 3 hearing aids tuned and fitted. Well, in an instant all the sounds I haven’t heard for years came ‘back into focus’. And miraculously the tinnitus, which had become the background noise of my life, stopped.
It was like I was flying through cloud and suddenly reaching clear air!
And here’s where it gets unbelievable.
With my glasses on and fitted out with my new hearing aids, I took a walk up into the rainforest, and the strength had come back into my knees!
I felt like a 20-year-old scrambling over boulders and jumping creeks.
How could bringing my hearing and sight senses back into sharpness instantly give me back my strength?
Maybe we really are one interconnected living system? Duh!
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
