Use It or Lose It

IWhen a younger performer suggested that country music legend George Jones and other older singers should step aside and leave the scene to the next generation, Jones responded with a new popular song called, I Don’t Need No Rocking Chair!” The song is a vigorous defense of the contributions that older people still have to make to society. I have subscribed whole heartedly to this position since I adopted Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses as my philosophy as a teenager. Tennyson has the ancient Greek hero speak these words to the surviving crew who shared his twenty-year voyage home from Troy:

My mariners,

Souls’ that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and oppos’d

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;

Death closes all; but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

  …

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

We are not now that strength which in old days

Mov’d earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I don’t believe that, when looking at me, most people see an Indie author of three novels that have won awards and appeared on bestseller lists.  Yet, although I am in my 79th year, except for some creakiness when I get up in the morning, I don’t feel like an old person.  This didn’t just happen by chance. Before I began publishing Indie novels at 75, I was beginning to slow down. Even as this was happening, I realized that much of it was my own fault. There is an old adage about aging that says, “use it or lose it.” I was not using either my body or my brain enough. Armed with exercise sheets provided by my doctor, I was able to minimize the aches and pains that were invading my body by regular exercise. Reactivating my brain required that my mental faculties be worked just as rigorously.

Entering the Indie author arena came rather naturally to me. I had aspired to be a novelist all my life. Several manuscripts that I had started over the years were still in my computer. The eBook revolution taking place in book publishing provided opportunity. The Internet makes research infinitely easier that in my earlier years. But preparing and publishing eBooks is hard work that demands meticulous attention. Completely focusing the mind is required. But the more I wrote, the sharper my mind seemed to become. I enjoy life much more now than I did in my mid-70s. 

My current role model is the South African novelist, Wilbur Smith. The author of scores of highly successful novels, Smith has done some of his best writing in his 70s and 80s, including #1 Bestsellers. At 81, he has just published the latest in his series dealing with ancient Egypt, Desert God. The book became an instant bestseller in Great Britain when published there. Look for it on the New York Times Bestseller List in the next few months. I have written before that if you want to understand Africa, read Wilbur Smith’s novels. I follow him on Facebook, and I am amazed to read his posts about salmon fishing in Norway and exhaustive book signing tours in Great Britain. He keeps both his body and his mind continuously active.

I know that I will never be anywhere near as good a writer as Wilbur Smith. But I can aspire to emulate his active lifestyle. Like him, I hope to continue writing as long as I am physically able. I don’t enjoy feeling like an old man.