Aging.

 I was once in a position where I worked with people that were regarded to be very important on subjects that were deemed (by those very same, very important people) to be very important. I had rank, was healthy, strong and could remember what I had for breakfast. Today, I have no position, do not work on anything terribly important to anyone else, and can not remember having breakfast, let alone what it was. The remarkable thing is that my happy/unhappy ratio is just about the same as it was back when I was important. Most of all, I understand how fortunate I am. I am married to a wonderful person, we have our own home, and, so far, at least, we can manage to scrape together enough pennies to take care of day-to-day expenses. I see a lot of other people at all stages of life who can not find happiness and I shake my head (slowly to avoid the disturbing sound of excessive rattling) and take pity on them. My advice to my elderly friends is to adopt my secret approach to aging.

First, you have to take an honest look at yourself as you are today, not back in your glory days. You have to accept your limitations and polish any advantages you might still have from back when you were smoking hot poop. You don’t have to tell others about any of your failings that they might not yet know about, but you have to understand them and accept them. Second, you have to understand that you can not retire. To retire is to die. You may not be able to any longer do what you used to do, but you need to do something that exercises as much of mind and body as is left from the glory days. Anything that retires, rusts and disintegrates more rapidly than would otherwise be the case, and that includes people. Third, you have to be judicious as to how much cutting edge technology you incorporate into your life. In my case, passwords are obviously meant for younger minds. Fourth, you have to be ruthlessly honest with yourself and understand exactly where you are on the inevitable slippery slide to oblivion. Pretending that you are more capable than you are is going to lead to great disappointment when the secret is outed because you crapped in your pants at the church social.

I try to keep up with what is going on around me, and I try to help others. I recommend that you other geezers should consider doing the same thing. Old folks may be weak in mind and body, but every single one of us also have some very valuable life experience that just might help somebody else somewhere along the line as long as it is honestly offered. We may not be any smarter than the next guy or gal, but we have been there and done a lot of that before, and we know where some of the mouse traps are. WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! You can not expect youth to listen to you. Young people know everything by definition, but they are sly little buggers too. As long as you are clever enough, they won’t admit it, but they will hear some of what you try to tell them. (Hear as opposed to listen.) That is the best that you can hope for and it should not discourage you, because you are ministering to yourself as much as you are the guy down the block that you are trying to help. (That is the profound thought here.)

If I could just …, I’d actually enjoy old age, because fewer people fight you for the seat on the bus and physical danger is less frightening because you are going to die day after tomorrow anyway.