Relevance!

More bemused reflections on my state of being and place in the world.  When I was younger I didn't think much about how young I was.  I seemed to be in the world on many different levels.  I had many different hats to wear.  Today I don't have as many hats and this makes me less and less relevant in The Big Picture.  I grew up with a mother who mentally was always twenty years older than her actual chronological age so I'm careful today to opine on this subject, this phase, with what I hope is a good perspective.  I internalized her obsession with aging in an unhealthy fashion.  I no longer do this.  When I talk about getting older I do it as a very active dude who goes at life with a lot of vigor.  Nonetheless, I don't want to be stupid about it.  I am hiking still but for two or three hours instead of four or five.  Sometimes I still hike for four or five hours but I'm savvy enough to realize that this would be problematic at some point.

I walk with an A.A. member who is getting close to fifty but doesn't really grasp what this entails.  I think he looks at me like his father or mentor but considers himself still in the game with young women twenty years younger than he is.  A twenty year ago difference is a twenty year age difference.  The physical decline becomes more pronounced the older we get - no one was checking my drivers license when I was buying beer in my late twenties - but we have a tendency to hang on to this image as a person who is younger than we really are.  This guy runs for exercise.  Good for him.  Some of us can tolerate more strenuous forms of activity for longer periods of time.  But he couldn't run for a number of months because of some knee pain.  When you're in your twenties pain or discomfort is something we can power through.  No pain, no gain, right?  Pain is weakness leaving your body, right?  Except when pain is telling you that you're damaging something.  My recollection is that I could do almost anything I wanted physically until I was in my forties when I began to hve the sneaking suspicion that I was bumping up against some physical limits.  This dude is going to be replacing his knees before he hits his sixties.  Or his hips.  But you can't tell him something like this even though I'm speaking from a place of experience.  

Relevance:  The degree to which something is related or useful to what is happening or being talked about; important to the matter at hand.