The sharpness of the blade

Keeping your mind sharp is important. As I reach my middle years I begin to understand just what it means to be mortal. The body is entering a fight of decline. The debts made on past indulgences will be paid in full now or at least very soon. That is why you must fight as hard as you can through exercise and learning. You don't need to be in a gym for 5 hours a day but you must make some effort. Everything we can eat may soon be doing us some disservice and we have to take into account that the body changes vastly over the coming few years. Coming into this age if you have a leg up on health and are fit going in things might appear easier but still the risks from injury and decline in willpower grow. Despite strength or cardiovascular fitness it wont stop the pain of arthritic joints or other inherited disease. That is why the re-education of your brain must begin. I have a neighbor who is elderly and has been slipping into dementia for a few years. His wife struggles, he struggles, their whole world is becoming one of utter frustration with life. Watching this decline from the outside and trying to be a good neighbor and help when I can I've seen the rapid change take place from the diagnosis onward. It's tragic. We can accomplish so much in life and live fulfilled and happy but if the mind is lost as you approach the end all would seem for naught. We are after all only a collection of memories in the minds of others. Very few of us leave a legacy that is looked back upon or studied. Then after a few generations we are all but forgotten. Reduced to pictures in an album or a name in a family tree. So we must fight to keep our minds sharp. Selfishly this life is our only go and we must make the most of it all the way till the bitter end. We must keep broadening our interests, taking in new information and ways of living to understand and relate to current situations and climates. Read, always read and challenge the mind with ideas and new concepts. I play deep strategic board games requiring a great deal of thought and planning. It's great and I learn something about history as well since most of these are war games. You must keep the mind going and engaged and communicate with people and meet new ones to share and grow and stay relevant! Keep your life full of meaning and engagement or else you waste away. My father did this, the wasting, we weren't close but I loved him. He retired and would spend most of his time alone or in front of the tv he wasn't engaged. He declined. His mind stayed reasonably sharp but you could tell the dulling and rusting was happening. Disease took him from us but in a way I think he was checked out already. But looking at my neighbor I realized how much I want to work towards prevention of this terrible disease myself. To be in a room and forget why you're there or if you're in the right house or where you are. Your loved ones are scared that you wandered off and will get lost every time you go outside. Forgetting the people you love and the work you've done. I know we don't have choice, genetic factors, environmental factors all add to the possibilities. At least we can try and make some effort to safeguard our health and mental well-being. But it's a fight and you must never forget. It's us versus mortality and the other guy always wins but if we try at least we can go the full 12 rounds