Damocles

It will be a long time before I drink a bottle of Propel again.

In all fairness to the brand of clear, fruit-flavored, electrolyte-infused sports drinks, it is not them, but me that is the problem.

Or rather it is that Propel and I have spent far too much time together. Kind of like after going on an extended road trip with your family you all need to scatter into different corners of the house when you get home. In the case of me and Propel, at least one of us needs some personal space and time away to sort through some things on our own.

I don’t put any blame on the colorless and ultimately inanimate sports drink. It was there for me when I needed it, but now it is time to move on.

Growing older brings with it various milestones. Some of these, like graduating from high school, getting your first job, getting married or the birth of your children become cherished memories. They are engrained in who you are and what you have become.

Other milestones are not so fondly remembered. The first major home repair you tried to do on your own that snowballed into an expensive life lesson of leaving plumbing work to plumbers. Or of realizing that you are far closer to retirement than you are to your 20s and that it is worth paying someone with a plow to remove the rock-like snow the city plow truck pushed in front of your driveway rather than attempting to do it on your own and end up laid up for a week from throwing your back out.

I was thinking about this last weekend as I was going through the preparation process for a scheduled colonoscopy. As anyone who has had the routine screening done will attest, you have a lot of time on your hands to think about stuff during the preparation process.

I don’t like going to the doctor and I definitely don’t like having to spend a weekend preparing for a routine medical screening that medical professionals encourage people to get done around the age of 45 to 50. Like many people, I try to avoid these sorts of things with the misguided hope that what I don’t know won’t hurt me. I recognize this is roughly the same mindset as turning up the car radio to cover up the disturbing rattle coming from the engine compartment. The reality, however, is that routine medical screenings are vital in catching issues before they become life threatening.

Knowing this fact didn’t make me any less anxious for scheduling it. Nor did reading any of the ever-so-helpful literature about the things that could go wrong or what they could find.

In all honesty, I should have scheduled it a year ago, but conveniently kept putting it off, much like you put off cleaning out your gutters. However much I tried to ignore it and pretend it would just go away on its own, I knew it was out there hanging over me. Earlier this spring when getting a yearly check up, I was reminded by my medical provider of the need to get it done.

Getting it scheduled took far more time than I expected. What I anticipated to be a few weeks, turned into a few months as we looked for available dates that wouldn’t conflict with things I needed to be at during the rush of events that take place in April and May.

The ancient Greeks often used stories to share life lessons. One of those stories is of the Sword of Damocles. The sword in question was hung pointy-end down and held up only by a single hair of a horse’s tail over the throne of the king. It was placed there as a pointed reminder of the dangers which could overtake even a king.

It was only after sitting on the throne for a day and becoming aware of the dangerous sword hanging above him, that Damocles gave up his ambitions.

In popular culture the Sword of Damocles has become a reference to the anxiety of being reminded that you have something hanging over your head and the relief you feel when you are finally out from under it.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.