RICHARDSON: Top of my game for 2016
This new year has had an inauspicious beginning. As it enters its second week, I've already been to one funeral, that of longtime supporter of all things Warner Robins Barbara Shaheen. On Tuesday I'll attend the homegoing of former Bibb County school Superintendent Sharon Patterson. Enough already.
I wish it were in our powers to shoo the Grim Reaper away, but from birth he's chasing all of us down. And as much as we try to escape, he eventually ... well, you know.
With that in mind, we should live our days being productive and with a mission. And our mission is not to work ourselves to death. Our mission is not to rob our families of our time. Been there, done that. It was a disaster.
So what's our mission? Live each day to the fullest. Don't waste a minute of it. No one knows when the Grim Reaper is behind the wheel of that truck, and in today's world the Old Reaper has more tools than ever before.
He used to use war and pestilence. He had various plagues he could pull out of his trick bag from bubonic plague to yellow fever to Ebola, He could cripple us with polio or use any of the other pathogens roaming our world. But, at least in our part of the globe, medical advances have put a hurt on his tool box. The Old Reaper has had to up his game. He's started to use new weapons, ones that can't really be stopped — us.
We are killing ourselves at a rate in this country he could never have thought possible through disease. Before the gun nuts start hyperventilating, I'm not talking about guns, although it would be easy to throw them in the mix, too. I'm talking about the expanding girth of our waistlines and the epidemic of obesity.
Obesity is married to diabetes and it's a polygamous relationship, because heart disease and high blood pressure, stress and a host of other maladies are all sleeping in the same bed.
I am the pot, and I'm not calling the kettle black. I eat too much. I eat the wrong things at the wrong times. Temptation is my middle name. I don't exercise enough. I have high blood pressure and diabetes (fortunately both under control), and I had to give up three of my favorite things: ice cream, potato chips and sweet tea. I still cheat on the tea and the chips, but ice cream doesn't enter the house. I don't even go down that aisle in the grocery store.
Why am I telling you this? I want all of us to be around come this time in 2017. Some of us won't make it. But let me be the one who gets hit by the truck of taken out by a deranged gunman. I don't want to be the driver of the truck or pull the trigger myself. And if we continue down the obesity road, that's exactly what we'd be doing.
We can only control the things we can control. We can't worry about the unforeseen. We know if we eat like a horse, we'll end up looking like one. We know if we don't physically stay active, somebody will have to push us around in a wheelchair. That's no fun.
I want to stay vibrant for as long as I can, and that means I have to work today so it pays off tomorrow. Join me. No new year's resolutions to make and break. Just a promise to ourselves to do three simple things: eat less, exercise more and worry less. It's the small things that count, not the big diets or the difficult routines we see on "The Biggest Loser." It's going for a morning or afternoon walk. When you start to feel full, stop eating. You don't have to finish that last piece of chicken just because it's there.
I have only one goal. Make it to 2017 healthy. I will be 65 this year. I never thought I'd be able to say that. I still feel like I'm 30, but the mirror testifies differently. I have to send my cape to the cleaners because it's got a few wrinkles, but I have to be at the top of my game in 2016. That's what you've come to expect, and I don't aim to disappoint.
Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph's editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.com. Tweet@crichard1020.
This story was originally published January 9, 2016 at 9:10 PM with the headline "RICHARDSON: Top of my game for 2016 ."