Confessions of an old worry wart

 

Larry with daughters Arianna, left, and Alana on his 70th.

CUTLINE: Larry is surrounded by his two daughters, Arianna, left, and Alana, while celebrating his 70^th birthday at an area restaurant. (Photo by Lynne Cains)

I recently turned 70, and as the saying goes, reaching that milestone is better than the alternative. But hitting that mark also has also convinced me to try to become less of a worry wart --- something I’ve been for the better part of my life.
In this column, which I wrote for the September edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence, I share my thoughts on being a worry wart, and also offer a few observations on growing older.

Here is the link to the column as it appears on the Jewish Rhode Island website: https://www.jewishrhody.com/stories/a-few-things-ive-learned-in-my-70-years,17213?

This column appears in the September edition of Jewish Rhode Island of Providence:

One of the advantages of growing older has been learning to live more spontaneously. That doesn’t mean that I’m acting more impulsively, but it does mean that I’m resolving to appreciate the good times.
That’s been no small achievement for someone who always has been a major worry wart to the point where it was tough to enjoy my down time. For instance, during my working days, I’d no sooner get done with the deadline for that day’s newspaper than I’d start worrying about the next day’s edition.
Although that was an occupational hazard, my tendency to obsess about what’s coming next too often prevented me from having fun on vacations; instead, I’d spend some of my vacation time worrying about the work that awaited me after my break.
Being an excessive worry wart also diminished my ability to completely enjoy birthdays and celebrations, including my daughter’s bat mitzvah 13 years ago. My concerns about the details that had to be taken care of --- and dealing with various problems that cropped up during the event --- prevented me from fully enjoying it.
That admission was something I only recently acknowledged, and it  was a cathartic one as it’s helped me to gradually learn to savor life’s simple pleasures. Having the pandemic deny me the chance to participate in many activities that I used to take for granted helped me realize it was important to overcome my worry-wart tendencies.
I’d been working on that for a while, but it wasn’t until a week before turning 70 in mid-August, while doing a 5K race in North Attleboro, that I began to put my worry wart self into perspective. The race was held during early August’s extreme heat wave, and it was a struggle. I told myself that I was fortunate to still be doing races 48 years after first hitting the road, and took it easy to compensate for the heat.
Then, with two-tenths of a mile left in the race, my worries melted away when I saw that my younger daughter and her friend, who had long ago finished their races, had returned to the course to exhort me to finish.
I was awfully proud of Alana at that moment, and my pride increased later at the awards ceremony when it turned out that not only did my daughter win the 20-29 women’s age group, but I had taken second in mine (60-69) --- the last time that I’d be racing in that age bracket.
Observations at 70
Besides having an epiphany of sorts over my worry-wart tendencies, I’ve had a few other observations since turning 70:
* It’d be a less contentious society if people realized that none of us are getting off this planet upright. It’s a shame that our mortality can’t convince us to treat each other with respect, civility and modesty instead of the non-stop bickering, complaining and angry tirades that have dominated the nation for way too long.
* Our health is everything. If you didn’t subscribe to that viewpoint before the COVID-19 pandemic, you should do so now.
* Embrace your friends and neighbors. We need each other. If the isolation brought on by the pandemic taught us anything, it was that we can’t live a full life by ourselves; we need to be part of a community.
* Try to accentuate the positive. That’s not easy to do in a country where raw hatred, racism and anti-Semitism are being zealously promoted by white supremacists, who are more emboldened today than they’ve been in decades.
* Don’t get into social media spats. I’ve never had a personal Facebook, Twitter or Instagram account and don’t regret it.
You know you’re old …
Here are two “you know you’re getting really old” musings. You’re really old when:
* You remember rabbit ears on your TV and having only three commercial networks. Now there are hundreds of channels and so many streaming services that our entertainment selections are actually limited.
Example: We have cable TV and five streaming services --- and still can’t watch movies made by other streaming services, even Oscar-winning films. How about a streaming service that offers the best of all of them? It’ll never happen, because too many people are making too much money off the current restrictive set-up.
* Too many athletes, TV personalities, actors and actresses you grew up with are dying. Three recent deaths to make me feel very old were those of Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell at 88, “Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols at 89 (who played Lt. Nyota Uhuru on that iconic ’60s TV series) and Tony Dow at 77 (Beaver’s brother Wally on “Leave It To Beaver”).
Russell, who won 11 of 13 possible NBA championships during his stint with the Celtics, including two as a player-coach when he became the first Black coach in professional sports history, was the GOAT --- Greatest of Old Time --- before former Patriots and now Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady was called the GOAT. The NBA said Russell’s fabled No. 6 will be retired league-wide, meaning that no one else will ever wear it except for a few current players who will be given an exception. (Major League baseball years ago did the same thing for the No. 42 worn by Dodger great Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League baseball’s color barrier in 1947.)
That’s a fitting tribute to Russell, who was not only a great athlete, but also a pioneering Civil Rights advocate who marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
LARRY KESSLER (larrythek65@gmail.com) is a freelance writer based in North Attleboro. He blogs at  https://larrytheklineup.blogspot.com