A good friend of mine recently lamented the degradation of his hearing. He’d been tested and the results were devastating to him.
Theo really loves his music, especially now that he’s retired and has more time to enjoy his recordings. The prospect of not being able to hear them has made him increasingly distressed and depressed. He fears that losing his hearing entirely will deny him his greatest source of pleasure, although the doctor didn’t say that was imminent.
For the moment however, he can still immerse himself in the intricacies of Mahler, Dvořák, and Miles Davis.
“Why not focus on that, Theo; why focus on a future which may never materialize?” I asked him. “We waste so much of our life energy fearing a future which never comes about. Doesn’t that destroy the present moment?”
“First the election, and now this,” he lamented, throwing all his woes into one oversized bag.
Courtesy of Pixabay.com/Ivan Samkov.
“I’m sorry you feel that way Theo. A friend of mine recently cancelled me; said he can’t continue to be friends with anyone who has my political leanings. We’ve been friends for 40 years! I reminded him of what Yoda said in Star Wars: ‘Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.’”
“Too bad for him,” Theo responded. “I’d never do anything like that. I don’t need my friends to agree with me on everything, and I’m certainly not going to risk losing them over an election. How shortsighted is that!”
“That’s what I told Aaron. The news media keeps everyone in a constant state of fear because a stressed population is more gullible. Much of the time, they’re deliberately spreading misinformation. Why not kick them out of your life instead of your friends and family!”
Courtesy of Pexels.com/Andrea Piacquadio.
“Aaron will have a lonely retirement if he keeps doing that,” Theo responded.
“Remember when I joined the audio club 25 years ago? Motorcycling was my great obsession at the time, but I also had a passion for music. I knew there would come a day when riding would no longer be a possibility, so I prepared for it by indulging my other passion.
Through our audio club, I developed a whole new group of friends. Now that I’m 75 and my vision and reflexes are compromised, I spend more time with my audio buddies than my biker friends.”
“I’ve never had a plan like that, Montana, I spent all my life working and music was my back-up plan.”
“Then you must adapt Theo, buy yourself a pair of headphones and a digital equalizer for Christmas. As your hearing degrades, you can turn up the volume as loud as you like without driving your wife crazy, and alter the EQ to compensate for your hearing loss. It won’t be the same as before, but neither are eyeglasses, dentures, or a wheelchair.”
“God I hate getting old.”
“You’d prefer the alternative maybe?” He laughed.
“Age is loss; the sooner you accept that and accommodate yourself to it, the more you’ll be able to enjoy your senior years. One thing's for sure, if you don’t, you’ll wish you had. As the song goes, ‘You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.’”
“That’s true. I wish I’d spent more time with some of my friends before they passed,” he responded wistfully.
"There’s a lot of things I wished I’d done while I was able. But the past is history. Forget about it and focus on what’s still available to you.”
“I’ve made so many mistakes, Montana, sometimes I feel like I should just fade away.”
“Be careful Theo. That will become a self-fulfilling prophesy sooner rather than later if you don’t modify your thinking. Seems like there’s a medical study coming out every month indicating that attitude has everything to do with health and longevity, so don’t make another mistake, change it while you’re still healthy."
“And how do you propose I do that?”
“By staying active. Weren’t you a railway enthusiast at one time? Why don’t you visit the railway museums within reach? If you find one close by that you like, speak to management and volunteer to become a docent.”
Theo did exactly that, and although he has to wear hearing aids now, he’s reignited an old passion and developed a new raison d'etre. It got him out of the house, away from the TV, and out of his funk.
To paraphrase Helen Keller, “Most of the time, our biggest problem in life is the way we think about it.”
Helen Keller. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/public domain, cropped to fit format.
Header image courtesy of Pixabay.com/GDJ.
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