Hollywood legend Dick Van Dyke is opening up about how growing old has affected him bodily and emotionally as he approaches his one hundredth birthday. In a brand new well being replace, the “Mary Poppins” and “Dick Van Dyke Present” star mirrored on the realities of rising older, the bodily challenges he now faces, and the mindset that has helped him keep joyful regardless of growing limitations. The beloved entertainer, who has remained energetic nicely into his 90s, shared a deeply private have a look at how his life has modified and what continues to maintain him younger at coronary heart.

Van Dyke mirrored candidly on the challenges he faces now, explaining that growing old has introduced new limitations into his as soon as boundlessly energetic life. “It’s irritating to really feel diminished on the earth, bodily and socially,” he wrote in an essay for the Sunday Occasions.

The actor additionally revealed that he not too long ago needed to flip down work alternatives in Chicago and New York as a result of long-distance journey has merely turn into too overwhelming. “Nearly all of my visiting with people has to occur at my home,” he stated, noting how his world has naturally shrunk with age.

Recognized for many years for enjoying humorous older characters, Van Dyke acknowledged the irony that he now embodies a few of these bodily traits himself. “Like my previous characters, I’m now a stooper, a shuffler and a teeterer. I’ve toes issues and I am going supine as typically as is politely potential,” he wrote.

Van Dyke didn’t draw back from describing the day-to-day realities that include being practically 100. “My sight is so dangerous now that origami is out of the query,” he admitted. “I’ve bother following group conversations and complain steadily about my listening to aids, although I’d by no means discuss with them as ear trumpets. I’m not that previous.”

He added that he spills meals on himself extra typically than he’d like, which often sparks playful pressure at dwelling. “When my spouse, Arlene, asks me to placed on an unstained shirt earlier than we exit, I get impatient,” he wrote. “‘It’s obtained blueberry throughout it,’ she’ll say. ‘Polka dots are in once more!’ I’ll reply.”

Regardless of the bodily decline, Van Dyke emphasised that his inner world remains to be vibrant. “However the superficial stuff, the bodily decay, is about the one factor I share with the previous guys I performed means again when,” he stated. “Thank God, on the within, I’m as totally different from them as I might get.”

Van Dyke credited his longevity to a lifetime mindset of embracing pleasure relatively than surrendering to hardship. “I’ve made it to 99 in no small half as a result of I’ve stubbornly refused to provide into the dangerous stuff in life: failures and defeats, private losses, loneliness and bitterness, the bodily and emotional pains of growing old,” he stated.

“That stuff is actual however I’ve not let it outline me,” he continued. “As a substitute, for the overwhelming majority of my years, I’ve been in what I can solely describe as a full-on bear hug with the expertise of dwelling. Being alive has been doing life, not like a job however relatively like a large playground.”

He stated {that a} “joyful and fulfilling” life comes down to a few issues: “Romance, doing what I like, and an entire lot of laughing.”

Earlier this yr, Van Dyke opened up about one of many harder realities of reaching such a unprecedented age throughout a heartfelt Q&A on the Dick & Arlene Van Dyke Current Vandy Camp occasion. The actor revealed that he and his longtime good friend Ed Asner as soon as hoped to remake “The Odd Couple” collectively earlier than Asner’s loss of life in 2021.

“That may’ve been such enjoyable, and we misplaced it. I’ve misplaced lots of mates,” Van Dyke shared, in keeping with PEOPLE. His spouse, Arlene, gently added perspective of her personal, sharing, “He is outlived all people. That is the curse of dwelling to virtually 100.”