Anything Is Possible
Or is it?
Back in 2013, Diana Nyad accomplished something no other long-distance swimmer had even tried. She swam from Cuba to the U.S. without a shark cage. It was her fifth attempt to negotiate the 110 miles with its manifest risk of sharks and deadly jellyfish. She was 64 years old.
Annette Bening’s portrayal of Nyad in the 2023 movie is a tour de force in capturing her determination and willingness to put herself through the kind of challenge not available to most mortals.
And yet, for all the inspiration her mythic accomplishment offers up, there was an aspect I found sobering, even dispiriting, at witnessing what she was a willing to endure. At the end of the movie, there’s a clip of the real Nyad on the Ellen DeGeneres show in which she says, with all the pride of a woman who pushed herself to the brink of her power and beyond: “It just shows that anything is possible.”
I turned 75 on 12/12/2024, a date with a distinct ring to it. I celebrated by doing something I love — dinner and live music at a jazz club with a few close friends and my husband.
A few days earlier, as I was pulling books from my shelves in the interest of paring down my library, I came across a novel, Lovingkindness, by Anne Roiphe, a gift from a friend who would be spending my 75th birthday with me. The title is a word with great significance in both Jewish (chesed) and Buddhist (maitri) traditions. The inscription speaks volumes about the continuity of friendship and birthdays:
12 December 1987
Dear Debbie,
With lovingkindness you persevere and with lovingkindness you will triumph —
Love, Joan
I am no stranger to perseverance, possibly my middle name (I’m a writer, after all). It’s a word I’ve always liked the sound of. So much more resonant than its linguistic cousin perseverate, something I also know only too well.
Isn’t it something of a wonder to stumble on a particular message when we most need it? Call it an affirmation. Call it synchronicity. Call it the universe speaking to me, sentimentally, as I linger over my dear friend’s words.
Each year on my birthday, as new cards arrive, I find myself weeding through cards from previous years that sentimentality has had me keeping too long. Collectively, they are something of a this-is-your-life treasure trove, friends and family making sure to remind me that birthdays really are not just another day on the calendar. My daughter’s cards are always peppered with loving words of wisdom that place me on the cusp of the year I’m saying goodbye to and the one I’m about to enter.
For my 72nd birthday, the card she sent showed colorful drawings of women in various yoga poses — Get in your birthday flow, it read, Celebrate in mind, body, and spirit. Her personal message was a reminder that it was a physically humbling year for me (an injury) but my life is otherwise pretty perfect. P.S. she wrote: Next year in Bhutan? Africa?
Which brings me back to the question of what really is within the realm of possibility at any given age. And how much wiggle room is there when aging gracefully finds itself at cross-purposes with an anything-is-possible mindset? Emily Dickinson poetically tells us to dwell in possibility, but that’s of a more ethereal kind.
Even if I will never fulfill my daughter’s dream of climbing Mt. Everest with her, I’m learning to think of my aging more in terms of recalibration rather than limitations.
By most standards, I’m in good shape for my age.
My greatest physical feat was running the NYC Marathon, 1981. Some two miles from the finish line, I had a side stitch that forced me to slow down to a walk. The face of friend on the sidelines there to cheer me on was all I needed to up my pace. When the finish line was finally in view, I caught sight of a woman in front of me who looked worse than I felt. I was not going to let her finish ahead of me.
I sprinted to the finish line and into the arms of a volunteer on the lookout for dehydrated runners like me. He took me to the recovery tent where I was given liquids. Then I walked out of Central Park in my silver Mylar cape to my Upper West Side apartment, where friends and family would be waiting. It gave new meaning to the loneliness of the long-distance runner.
I was weeks from turning 32. My time was a respectable 3:48.57.
Months later, thinking I would start training for another marathon, I was not far into my daily six-mile loop around Central Park when I suddenly stopped. I want to walk, I remember thinking, like normal people. Apparently I was in the throes of classic burnout.
My jogging routine would become more enjoyable once I gave up the drive to go the distance. I would alternate days of running with strength and flexibility workouts at an exercise studio popular at the time. Eventually it would all give way to morning walks or a half-hour on my stationary bike and afternoon yoga.
Doesn’t the body, in its wisdom, know when recalibration is needed?
Each day presents choices, deliberations about what to prioritize. And believe when I say I know what a gift it is to have these kinds of choices.
So maybe, instead of the downward dog and warrior sequences of my yoga regimen, my tight quad is aching for some foam roller love (if you can call it that). Or maybe I’ll take a break from my cardio workout today, get off autopilot, shift gears and spend more time meditating. Sometimes just sitting still can be as good, if not better, for the heart.
