Bounce.

I'm turning 65 in two days. 

Every night when I'm done reading, I take an inventory of my joints. I check-in with each of them. They tell me how they're feeling.

My shoulders in particular are complainers.

I try to talk them off the edge.

But every once-in-a-while they hit me right between the eyes. Nothing can hurt you the same way a loved one can. And my shoulders pain me. They don't hold back. I think they hate me.

My right shoulder is the more aggressive one. He said to me the other night, "George, I've been in pain since you went to play baseball in the Mexican Baseball League in 1975. For almost 50 years, it's been painful for me to put on a tee shirt or take off an overcoat. All because you made those throws from your knees to nail those speedy runners during those meaningless games you played so ferociously."

I don't let my right shoulder off the hook that easily.

Listen, I said. 

Life is pain.

Dealing with it. Shaking it off. Overcoming it. Performing well despite it. Keeping on.

Life isn't painless. 

I don't know anyone whose knees haven't been scraped. Whose noggin hasn't been concussed. Whose eyes haven't been blackened and shut from swelling. 

I just heard a podcast called Dismissed hosted by a guy I don't know called Hugh Elliott. Hugh interviewed my friend, Debra Fried. 

Debra said something in the podcast that woke me up. That made me think of my nightly dialogue with my joints. 

Debra said when she was fired (I hate euphemisms for pain. Fired is fired. Just like died is died. Not passed on) people told her she would "bounce back." In reflection, Debra said the most profound thing I've ever heard from a podcast. 

She said, "I haven't bounced back. I bounced higher."

God bless Debra Fried.

God bless everyone who keeps fighting.

God bless everyone who lives knowing that life isn't a beautiful little home with a white picket fence on Primrose Lane. It's merging onto the Cross Bronx Expressway with a psychotic convoy of 18-wheelers bearing down on you. Oh, and potholes that could swallow a side-of-beef and still be hungry for more.

Life isn't about bouncing back. 

Sure that's resiliency. 

But true resiliency hugs too closely the status quo.

Bouncing higher leaps past where you were. 

It rejects limitations.

It finds headroom where there used to be ceiling.

Hear that, right shoulder?

Let's get with the program.

Let's bounce higher.

Like Debra.