The Art of Aging Gratefully

As each passing year has snuck up and shoved me a little further into senior citizenship, I am struck by how my view of the world and myself keeps changing. Consider these revealing signs of age-related evolution:

• I refer to people who drive any faster than I do as “maniacs.”

• My idea of hitting the club scene is shopping at Costco.

• I moved to a 55 Plus community so that when I use bygone words like “transistor radio,” “Mickey Mantle,” or “the Sears catalog” people know what I'm talking about.

• I divide my life into two periods: “The Agricultural Age” when I could eat everything in sight and not gain weight, and “The Information Age” where I read everything in sight about eating better to lose weight. 

• I say things like “Be careful, it’s a jungle out there” and “Can someone please explain to me why a baseball player is worth $10 million a year while a teacher only makes $35,000?”

• When I pull a muscle, twist an ankle, or otherwise injure myself in even a minor way, I know from experience that my recovery time may parallel the duration and comfort level of hiking cross country while pushing a barbecue grill. 

After another year rushed by and propelled me forward, I decided to launch an all-out search for the deeper meaning of my life. Conveniently, I found it on a celebrity website where I read that Rod Stewart, George Foreman and Frank Sinatra Jr. were all born on the same day as me. This is a truly fascinating piece of trivia since I’ve always thought that if you could somehow genetically combine those three men, you’d wind up with me. 

Okay, I haven’t always thought that, or even thought it once prior to seeing their names linked together by a random date on the calendar, but trivia always make me take a serious look at things.

Take the gray hairs that are appearing on my head in growing numbers. I tell myself that the gray I’ll be seeing in the mirror from here on out will come so gradually that almost nobody will notice. Oh sure, kids can be cruel (“Look mommy, it’s Wolf Blitzer!”) but most people will be too busy staring at their phones to separate the salt from the pepper.

Besides, I have come to see the significance of things like gray hairs as symbolizing the seasons of life. In case you hadn’t thought about it before, in your teens and 20s you’re in the springtime of your years. By the time you hit your 30s and 40s you are in summer. I’m in my late 60s. It’s mid-October from where I’m standing and I’m not in any hurry for the autumn leaves to fall.

Hey, I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. Well, not my whole life. But part of the fall and all of winter. With daily walks, a good multi-vitamin, proper colon care and afternoon naps, I should be able to keep that youthful spark that makes life worthwhile for us aging boomers.

One thing I know for sure at this stage of the game: It’s a nice place to get to in life where nothing much dazzles you but you have a quiet appreciation for many things. I’m there and I do.

Life is precious and tomorrow isn’t promised. So enjoy every sunset. Every sandwich. Every song. Every laugh. Every hug. Every new morning. Every old friend.

I think Oliver Wendell Holmes put aging in the best perspective when he said, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” In my case, I’ve discovered that what lies within is a nine-year-old boy who, in spite of evidence to the contrary, thinks if he runs across the lawn fast enough and jumps in just the right way, he can one day fly. 

Aging gratefully? You bet I am.

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