His Way

On December 12, 2012, I had a tiny epiphany, namely, that as long as I live, there will never again be a day when the abbreviated date will be the same repeated numbers, e.g. 12/12/12, which was the last such date until the start of the 22^ndcentury, at which point: 01/01/01 – January the 1^st, 2101. I can hardly wait.

Science will be of no help in that regard – my waiting, I mean – nor would I choose to hang around if it were. Maybe I’d be looking forward to 01/01/01 as my 154^thyear approached. Indeed, that numeric confluence might well be the only thing on the horizon to make me smile. A nurse would whisper in my ear: Happy New Year.  But the slog to 02/02/02 and so on is too much to contemplate.

All my life, I’ve been a good athlete. Good, I say, not great. But from about my 27^thyear (there was a period between finishing college through age 26 when I had “gone to seed”), I’ve worked hard at being fit and – my passion for wine, beer, spirits, and chocolate notwithstanding – eating healthfully.

My wife has been my greatest teacher in the matter of nutrition, even if she’s sometimes been guilty of loving me with chocolate. (She’d argue that chocolate is not unhealthful in moderation. Of course, moderation’s my problem.) And when I write stretched out on the bed, as I began to do several years ago in the midst of some health crises, she herds me back into my home office, and mandates periodic standing up, moving around, and the drinking of glasses of water, and she accompanies me on walks and visits to the gym – and it shows! In her, anyway.

Click here to read the rest of Mr. Miner’s column at The Catholic Thing . . .