I know my back aches more than it used to. I know sometimes I pause in mid-sentence because I just can’t think of the right word and I know the word has come to my mind dozens if not hundreds of times before. I know I have to stop and sit more often when I am walking or doing physical work — and speaking of walking, I know I’d rather not run anymore, even if I’m in a hurry.
And yet I’m looking out at the world with the same consciousness that looked out at the world to find Spider-Man #4 in a pile of other comic books for sale in the summer of 1963. These are the same fingers and arms that held a woman for the first time in the 1970s with all the wonder and delight that can mean. I am still the young man who watched, fascinated, as stupid people hurled eggs at a stage in Oshkosh because they didn’t like what Mr. Reagan was saying about freedom and tyranny. Of course my opinions and frame of mind have changed in all these years, but it’s still me.
I look in the mirror and see the same person who looked in the mirror and saw an underweight tall drink of water, even though now I see an overweight old man with a beer belly.
All I’m trying to say is that the externals have changed and quite a few points of view have changed — although I still believe Reagan was right when he said government IS the problem — but the consciousness that powers these fingers across the page and sees and hears the world around it is still the same consciousness, even if it doesn’t see or hear as clearly as it did back in olden times.
We only get one body and one consciousness in this lifetime, and we’re stuck with them for a very long time, so it’s best we take care of them and feed them right and use them with as much wisdom as we can muster.