The Excellence of My Age

 

The Excellence of My Age

I am seventy‑six and a half, retired for a long time, and I feel that I have reached a new kind of excellence in my life. Every day, age sends me its gifts in the form of changes in my body and mind. I do not meet them with fear; I meet them with interest. I watch what happens in my physical and mental dimensions and I study these changes as I would study any complex system.

In earlier years, when something related to my health appeared, it demanded strong cognitive effort. I had to think hard: What is happening? What does it mean? Is it dangerous? Today the situation is much better. I now understand why these things happen. I carry in my mind many answers, built from decades in medicine and from observing my own aging. Because I know the causes, aging is not only a series of problems; it has become a field of personal research.

You may feel, reading these words, that I am offending you by speaking too directly about decline, loss, or the realities of age. In fact, I am not attacking you at all. I am sharing my positive reflection on my age. For me, this stage of life is not a valley; it is a peak. It is the peak of my life in terms of clarity, understanding, and inner freedom.

From Fear to Understanding

In my earlier years, bodily changes often felt like threats. They were warnings of possible disease, losses of function, risks for the future. Each significant symptom forced me into intense diagnostic thinking to connect signs, physiology, and prognosis.

Now I find myself in a different position. My body is older, but my mind is more prepared. I have built a robust internal model of aging—of my arteries, my heart, my brain, my connective tissues. When I feel fatigue, imbalance, pain, or forgetfulness, I do not experience them as random enemies. I see them as expected, understandable expressions of an aging system. This understanding is not only medical; it is also philosophical. It gives me serenity where earlier there might have been anxiety.

The Question Most People Avoid

From time to time my wife or neighbors, who are about the same age, ask me: “What is happening to me? Why do I feel this or that?” When they ask for an explanation, I reply with a question of my own: “Do you really want to know the cause?”

This is a serious question. To know the cause is to face the full reality of aging: that some processes can be slowed or compensated, but not reversed; that our organism is finite. Many people are not ready for that level of clarity. My wife knows how I answer. When I ask her whether she really wants to know, she often says: “No, do not explain.” She chooses not the medical truth in full detail, but peace of mind. I respect that. For me, knowledge brings freedom. For others, detailed knowledge can feel heavy.

Studying My Own Aging

What surprises me is that I find this period of life more interesting than many earlier periods. In my youth and middle age, my attention was on patients, theories, research projects, and teaching. I studied cardiovascular systems, trauma, functional systems, and many other complex topics.

Now I have added a new object of study: myself. Each new sign of age—whether in sleep, memory, attention, movement, or mood—becomes information. I look at it through the eyes of a physician and a scientist, but also with the acceptance of a person who knows that time moves only forward. I combine curiosity and acceptance. In this way, my own aging becomes a living laboratory. I continue my research, but now the main subject is my own organism.

Development Against All Winds

Most stories about aging speak mainly about decline: less strength, less speed, less memory. My story is different. I direct myself toward development, even now—mentally and physically—contrary to all winds and troubles.

For me, development means that I keep reading, writing, thinking, and creating. It means that I move my body as much as it reasonably allows, train my balance, maintain my endurance, and seek new forms of activity. It means that I use my understanding of physiology and systems to adjust my behavior, not to surrender. I do not deny age; I work with it. I treat each new sign not as a command to stop, but as a signal to adapt wisely.

The Peak Of My Life

When I say “the excellence of my age,” I mean that this stage of my life is a peak of understanding. Across my years in clinical practice, research, and teaching, I built models of how complex systems behave. Now I apply those models to the most intimate system I know: my own body and mind.

So if my words sound sharp, please see their true intention. I am not offending you. I am inviting you into my positive reflection on aging. I feel that I am standing on a high point of my life, where I can see clearly how my organism changes and where I can still choose—to think, to learn, to act, and to grow. This ability to keep developing, mentally and physically, despite age and adversity—that is, for me, the real excellence of my age.

Mykola Iabluchanskyi