Prime Time - Jane Fonda [34]
I said to myself, “Jane, you’re seventy now. How many times do you have to do something wrong before you learn a lesson? Can’t you finally understand the value of taking time and being deliberate with your actions rather than driven? Promise that you will never make this mistake again.”
I returned to Turks and Caicos four months later for a second try. “Slow down” was my mantra this time, and together with my already-scuba-certified daughter and son, I made two successful dives to eighty-five feet. I descended at a pace that seemed preposterously slow, but I wasn’t about to fail again! The sheer joy of swimming with my children along a spectacular coral shelf among reef sharks, stingrays, barracudas, sea turtles, and many colorful fish was the big payoff, and I learned a big life lesson: This is the stage of life where there is less room for ego and more need for humility, balance, and common sense.
In Women Coming of Age, I included a photo of a woman in her eighties jogging with her daughter. I was utterly confident that that’s how I would be when I got to that age. Well, I’m ten years younger than she was, and I haven’t been able to jog for nearly a decade! My replaced hip and knee won’t let me. But I’ve found that that’s okay, just so long as I do something. It would have been easy to stop exercising after my hip surgery, or because my knees sometimes hurt due to osteoarthritis. For a while I felt sure I’d never be able to do anything close to what I had done before. But when, mostly for vanity reasons, I started up again, I soon discovered that moving, walking, swimming, lifting light weights, and stretching made my muscles and joints feel much better. It was when I was inactive that the arthritis got worse—and so did my mood.
I don’t jog anymore or do anything else that overly stresses my joints. Even downhill skiing is out. But I’ve gotten into snowshoeing, and this slower, more meditative, but equally aerobic sport is, for me, perfectly suited to the Third Act.
Since I’m not in the snow very often, what I do to burn calories and stay aerobically fit is walk briskly (anywhere) or hike (when I’m in the country and the weather’s nice) for an hour, five or six days a week. When the weather is too hot or too cold, I go to a gym and get on a recumbent bike or an elliptical trainer (the kind that works the arms as well as the legs). I’ll go for thirty minutes, switching every ten minutes from one machine to the other to ease the boredom.
Occasionally I replace walking with swimming for thirty minutes, and when I do, I protect my neck by wearing a well-fitted mask and snorkel, which eliminates the need to turn my head every few strokes to catch a breath. It also makes it easier for me to go into a meditative state without worrying about bumping into the ends of the pool.
Me, hiking a steep hill.
Snorkeling in the Galapagos.
Too many people—men, especially—will stop physical activity altogether if they are no longer able to do things the way they did when they were younger. This is a real mistake. It’s far better to keep active, but at a lower level. And if, for some reason, you have been unable to work out for a time, be careful when you start up again.