No one told me and I didn’t guess. Short sighted of me I know. When I was younger, I would think I will never clear my throat like that when I am talking. I would never be vain enough to trim my nose hair.

Never will I be vain enough to trim my ear hair. Why don’t they eat a salad and exercise why?

The sheer arrogance and ignorance of those thoughts are like squeaking brakes on the highway that is my mind. So many things that seemed like poor choices made by my elders were just humans coping with difficult health and situations.

No one told me that my throat would fill with phlegm and that I would feel like I was choking.

So, I clear my throat. Conscious of all the younger people in the room looking at me as if my mind had deteriorated in to senility.

No one told me the hair in my nose would turn bright white and grow so long that I would be in a meeting and watch my client’s head bob up and down with the white hair moving in and out of my nose as I breathed. They were incapable of listening to my words they were so hypnotized by the white hairs bobbing in out, in and out. So, I trim my nose hair often.

No one told me that my ear hair would become stiffer than the whiskers on my face. Trying to sleep my ear hair whiskers scratching my pillow seemed incredibly loud. They didn’t tell me that the hair in my ears would scratch my pillow so loudly that it would sound like rats gnawing through a wall. The scratching keeping me awake all night. So, I trim my ear hair.

No one told me that I would have so many injuries that I am a lump of scar tissue. No one told me that my body would turn on me and refuse to lose weight no matter how I dieted or exercised.

Limiting my calories fanatically didn’t work even when combined with daily five-mile runs, double classes in martial arts, aerobics and weight lifting.

So, I have a belly.

When you see someone older try and hesitate before you judge, maybe just maybe the reason they are so stingy with their money is that circumstance beyond their control took all their savings and investments.

Maybe just maybe the fat person you think should exercise does or maybe they have a medical condition that keeps them from exercising. Maybe, just maybe they were fit like you until a heart condition caused them to gain weight. Or maybe their spine is deteriorating and the medicine they take cause weight gain.

Year ago, I was in a car wreck. I had an explosion fracture of my cervical vertebrae. There were three bone chips imbedded in my spine. The doctors couldn’t believe the x-rays. I was told that there was no way I should be alive. One my way to full recovery there was a period where if I raised my hand over my head I would blackout. If I bent over to pick something off the ground I blacked out. I could walk but only with pain. I gained weight. When I tried to limit my calories my recovery would slow.

Some times I think it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Sure, it wrecked my finances along with my body. And yet, and yet I say that it improved my soul for it was the first time in my life that I could not overcome my situation by sheer force of will. Or to be more accurate it took an inordinately long time. I did recover but along the way there were times that I appeared okay but could not do the things someone my age could normally do. This made me aware that you can’t always see someone else’s problems. That improvement in my soul is one of the greatest gifts I have been given.