My father has a wall of jars filled with nails of varying sizes in the garage.

Recently, he relabeled the containers to make them easier to see.

He applied a strip of bright orange tape and then wrote the nail size in inches in large block lettering: ½, ¾, 1 ¼, 1 ½, 2, 2 ¾, and so on.

Dad turned 97 recently. He is healthy and fit. His memory is fabulous. But his eyesight has deteriorated.

The decision to re-label the nail jars is pushing back against the physical limitations imposed by age.

It will allow him to continue to use the tools for projects. It’s a small adjustment that keeps him in the game.

I don’t think dad thinks about it that way. He’s an engineer and it’s just an engineering problem that needs to be solved. The labels are a solution.

It’s also an extension of a personal organizational system he’s used for decades. He assigns things a location and labels them.

His clothes closet has boxes that say “socks” and “T shirts.” The crawl space has hooks for each vacuum cleaner component. The garage has signs for the rake, broom, shears, trowel and shovel.

When I was younger, I viewed all this as a bit much.

But now, especially as I approach 60, I definitely see the utility.

The larger labels on the nails reflect on how we interact with our environment.

We spend so much of our youth trying to bend the world to our point of view.

As we age, most of us accommodate what can’t be altered, accepting the limitations placed on us.

And by settling, many people end up doing less.

The wiser course taken by my father is to make the writing on the labels really large and press ahead.

(Part of a series of life lessons based on conversations with my parents.)