Winding the Senior Clock

I’ve got a routine. I do it every day. I don’t think about it much anymore. It’s like winding an old clock.

You know the kind. The ones on a mantel or a wall that tick loud enough to hear in a quiet house. They don’t run on batteries. Somebody has to wind them. Skip a day and they start to lose time. Skip a few and they stop altogether.

That’s how my day works. When the routine runs the way it should, everything feels in sync. The hours line up. I know where I am in the day without looking.

When something interrupts it, the whole day feels off. I can’t always tell you what’s wrong. I’m just out of sorts. It feels like a missed step in time, like coming down a staircase and finding one less step than your foot expected.

For a long time I figured that was just me. An old man set in his ways. But it turns out there’s more to it.

The people who study aging have been looking at this for years. What they keep finding is that older folks with regular days tend to live longer than folks whose days are all over the place.

Sleep is a big part of it. People who go to bed and get up at about the same time each day do better than people whose sleep wanders around. And it isn’t just how many hours they get. The regularity counts on its own. The body seems to care about when as much as how much.

Getting out counts too. One long study followed people in their seventies and eighties. The ones who got out of the house every day lived longer than the ones who stayed in. That held even for folks who weren’t in the best of health.

So do the plain daily things. Chores. Errands. Seeing people. A little walking. Keeping your hands busy with something that needs doing. Those go hand in hand with a longer life too.

Now, I’ll be honest about what the studies can’t say. They can’t prove the routine alone adds years. Healthy people may just be better at keeping routines. Part of it may run the other way. The scientists are careful about that, and we should be too.

But I don’t need a study to tell me what I feel every morning. The routine keeps me wound. It keeps me in step with myself.

Here’s how I think it works. Your body has its own clock, and it’s been ticking since the day you were born. It runs your sleep, your hunger and your energy. It does best when you keep it set. Every day you wake up on time, step outside, eat at a regular hour and do the things you always do, you’re winding that clock.

Let it run down and it doesn’t stop all at once. It drifts. A little off today. A little more tomorrow. You don’t notice the first few minutes. You notice when you’re an hour behind and can’t figure out how you got there.

There’s something else a routine gives you, and it might matter most. It’s a way to notice when something’s wrong.

When your days run the same, a change stands out. You know when you’re more tired than you should be. You know when your appetite is off. You know when a walk you take every day suddenly feels longer. A steady routine is a kind of watchman. It tells you something has shifted before it becomes a problem.

A life with no rhythm can’t do that for you. Everything is always a little different, so nothing stands out.

I’ll add one more thing, because it’s on my mind these days. There’s a lot out there that wants to set your clock for you. The phone. The news. The screen that always has one more thing to show you. It’s easy to let those decide when you sleep, when you get up and where your hours go.

Don’t hand that over. Your routine ought to be yours. You should be the one who winds it, not something that profits from keeping you up late or holding you in a chair all day.

You don’t need a fancy plan. You need a few things you do every day, about the same time, on purpose. Get up. Get out. Eat on time. Move a little. See somebody. Go to bed when it’s time.

Then do it again tomorrow.

It isn’t exciting. Neither is winding a clock. But a clock that gets wound keeps good time for a long while. A clock that doesn’t starts losing it.

I’d rather keep good time. I think most of us would.

So find your routine, keep it and wind it every day. If something knocks it off one morning, don’t fret. Just wind it again the next.

The clock will thank you. So will the years.

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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.

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