My take on why old guys like me are so set in our ways

I’m now the person that I was always afraid of becoming. An old guy (I’m 77) who is really reluctant to deviate from his accustomed lifestyle. I’m not exactly the proverbial senior citizen sitting on his porch who screams at playful neighborhood children, “Keep your damn ball out of my front yard!”

But I can understand why that dude would say that.

Because the older I get — and so far I haven’t found any way to stop that inexorable trend — the more I cling to habits in an almost obsessive fashion. The reason I do this, so far as I can tell, is simple:

I don’t want to mess with success.

By which I mean, I’m pretty content with my life, all things considered. I’ve got medical problems, but they aren’t serious. No cancer, heart disease, or diabetes. I have worries, but they aren’t debilitating. No poverty, loneliness, or depression.

Problem is, I don’t know which of the things I’m doing are primarily responsible for keeping my physical and mental health in fairly decent shape. So I cling to all of those things, not wanting to stop some habit that is holding my body and mind together.

Vitamins and supplements… I take a lot of them every day. Can’t pare the number down because the one I ditch could be vital for me.
Exercise… I go to a Tai Chi class three days a week, exercise at our athletic club three days a week, work out lightly at home four days a week. Hardly ever miss doing any of this because if I do, I feel like I might fall apart.
Stretching… Twice a day I do physical therapy stretches for my sciatica and low back pain. Rarely skip them because my sciatica is way less painful than before.
Acupuncture… A session every three weeks, because it might be helping my sciatica and I don’t want to backslide.
Bedtime/waketime… I go to sleep at almost exactly the same time every night, and usually wake up at the same time. When I get into bed I read exactly four pages of a Daniel Silva/Gabriel Allon thriller. No more, no less. I sleep well. Have to keep doing what I’m doing.
Meditation… I meditate every morning after some inspiring reading. A mental health must. This is a 57-year-long habit.
Weight… I weigh myself every day. I try to not gain or lose more than a couple of pounds. After dinner I have two low fat, low calorie cookies. No more. No less.
Blog post… Every night I write something for one of my three blogs. I do this even if it’s late, and I’d rather do something else. Writing settles me. Makes me feel more in touch with other people and the world.

I could go on, but you get the picture. I’m not a robot, but I definitely cling to a bunch of habits. Much more so than when I was younger. I used to feel like I had a lot of leeway in my life. I could do different things without worrying that they’d have a deleterious effect on me.

Now, I feel, with good reason, that I’ve nowhere near as resilient. For example, an injury that I’d get over in a few days when I was forty takes a few weeks to heal now that I’m approaching eighty.

That makes me more cautious about trying new stuff, or giving up old stuff. Sure, I may have become too rigid. That’s one of the things I worry about. In my better moments, though, I view my habits as somewhat akin to life in a Zen monastery: I take pleasure in doing the same things, because I’m never exactly the same person I was the last time I did them.

You know, the whole Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind thing. I used to abhor the thought of becoming an old man who is set in his ways. Now that I actually am an old man who is set in his ways, I’m good with that.