By Tommy Acosta
Sedona, AZ –You Baby Boomers out there know exactly what I’m talking about.
Sure, gravity keeps us from flying off into space and our colon working properly, but beyond that, gravity sucks—period!
When you are in your mommy’s womb, freshly conceived, you have no business with gravity. There you are, floating, growing cells and all that stuff, just happily swimming around in your amniotic jacuzzi.
But then, one day, you find yourself running out of room in your mom’s uterus, and a devastating incident crashes your perfect, peaceful world.
You are born!
One minute you are enveloped in warmth, tranquility and weightlessness, and the next you are squeezed into a strange world of blinding lights, cold, separation, and of course—gravity.
You lie on your back and can’t even lift your head from your crib’s mattress. All you can do is flail your arms and legs. You can’t even turn on your stomach or back, depending on how you’re laid in your bed. Gravity rules!
Basically, you are at war with gravity, and everything you do for that first year and a half or so is a struggle to turn over, crawl, and finally stand up in your crib.
That, basically, is your first victory over gravity.
So now you can walk. And as you grow older, you are stronger and have mastered gravity. You can run, jump, skip, and go wherever you want. Gravity is barely a factor in your existance.
Other than those times when you’re sick and bedridden or injured and can’t stand, you effectively rule over gravity… until one day you turn around and realize you’re over 50.
Uh-oh. Suddenly, gravity begins to take a bigger role in your life.
You realize you can’t run or even walk like you used to. It’s a bit harder to get up from your chair or bed. You find yourself relishing the moment when you can take a load off your feet, sit, lie down, and go “Ahh!”
Now we turn another corner, hit 70, 80 if lucky. and find it ever so much more difficult to defy gravity.
Getting up from a bed or a chair takes so much work. And it hurts. Our bones creak and moan from just standing up.
And even a short walk from your easy chair—that’s not so easy anymore—to the refrigerator or the bathroom is an agonizing journey full of peril as gravity waits for a chance to trip you to the ground and break something.
You try to seek respite from gravity any way you can but can’t deny it’s getting stronger every day. You can exercise, eat right, and do everything you can to avert the inevitable. But sooner or later, gravity conquers.
And then, at the end, you lie upon your deathbed, unable to move, not able to even lift your head from the pillow, just like when you were born, and, when it’s finally over, you are sucked back into the earth that patiently waits for you.
Ugh.
Yes. Gravity sucks. Especially for us older folks in the third act of our lives. So put an “r” in front of “age,” and rage against age. Everyone loves a good fight, even if we know who, no matter what, is going to win.
Unless of course, what remains of us are launched into outer space, to forever journey weightless, among the stars.
