One of the things I am afraid of, besides spiders, is getting old. It's not the aging so much, I'm ok with that. It's the cloudy thinking, that state of cerebral quicksand, that seems to accompany aging for so many people that squares the shit out of me.

Now I know that not all older people are losing their mental abilities, that would be an irresponsible assertion. I remember I used to have a best friend named Marie when I was younger. She was about 90 and lived in a senior citizens apartment complex. I would come watch "Hogan's Heroes" and "Hollywood Squares" with her while I did some odd jobs around the house. We'd settle down and have Diet Coke and Toll-House cookies and talk for hours. I was very fond of her. She was smarter than most 20 year olds, and was one of the few atheists that had really thought about why she did not believe in God-she was kind of like an evil C.S. Lewis. I miss her.

But on the other side of the coin, I spend a lot of time with older members of my family that have gone the other way. They do the same things every day, the describe the world around them only with concepts they have already embraced. If a large purple dinosaur knocked on their door, they would open it and not see him at all, and say "damn kids knocking on the door and running away!", (whereas I would get out the taser and chase him around the block-sorry that's a whole different rant). When I talk to them they don't hear what I am saying, they repeat what they have already decided like I must have just agreed with them even though I said the opposite.

Some of my coworkers and management are like this. Things are only done one way, you can't do it that way, we've always done it this way, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. They have embraced everything that is mediocre and mindless.

I don't know all the answers for staying out of this state. I know this blandness of mind and reason is not something that you just wake up with one day. It's a stealthy foe, that you always have to be watching for. I know reading, writing, learning new things, playing music and learning languages is a start.

When it comes to aging I'm not scared of becoming disabled in some way or losing some functionality, that's normal for most people. What scares me is losing my mind; losing the ability to change my mind, the ability to look at things critically and allow myself to be wrong.

Accepting a mediocre life as perfectly normal is the first step into the quicksand of mental decay...

Thanks for reading

AC