Life has a way of disrupting the most valiant efforts to achieve the ideal. Early this year, I came down with an eye disorder in which the lower eyelids lost their elasticity and drooped. Last June, I underwent surgery on both eyes and ended up with one eye completely covered with bandages for several months. As a result, I haven’t been able to read at my usual pace, and I had to stop weightlifting altogether. My muscles are going soft, and I’m actually developing a bit of a belly. My eyes are now almost completely healed, so I’ll resume working out soon, probably within the week. I’ll try to return to being the best man I can be in all three aspects.
I know only one man who has sustained superiority in all three aspects of manhood, the physical, the intellectual, and the artistic. This man holds (like me) a PhD. He is a scientist by trade who keeps in shape by running. In his free time, he is a musician who performs with musical groups. If he has a flaw, it might be one we share: a bit of an ego. Somehow, I can’t blame him for that.
One reward for keeping myself in shape is that I am invariably taken for being as much as twenty years younger than I am. I’m inclined to believe that my sensitivity to being as old as I am results from being used to being in top form. My body is unquestionably slowing down. That really bothers me.
So I’ll go on trying to be an ideal man. And I’m finding a new source of pride: being as old as I am and still in good shape physically, mentally, and artistically. Maybe I’ll achieve my goal of living to be over a hundred and still able to write up to the end.
Time will tell.
Tom Glenn, Writer 