What’s your Yardstick?
In my view, the only way to deal with age is to lie about it. Of course, you can’t fool relatives or friends who know you well. So every year they send a card—either an e-card or a traditional one sent by mail—praising the fact that you’ve reached another milestone and make it a point to display the correct number in as big a font as possible. I suspect that they simply want to point out that they are not there yet.
We all age no matter how we feel (or lie) about it. Would we want to be younger? I suppose most of us feel that it’d be a good thing.
The mother of a friend just celebrated her 90th birthday, and someone asked her that exact question: Would you want to be younger? In her wisdom she answered: Not especially. Of course, she would prefer that her body not be on its decline, but she said that she was proud of what she had done and had seen. It had been her life, her time. “Younger folks will see other things, live in a world quite different from mine, I’m sure,” she said, “but the important thing to consider is whether they will be happy. I was happy. That’s my yardstick.”
Wonderful perspective, don’t you think? We should spend less time worrying about the number marking the years we have lived and more time making the most of our lives at this point in time. Sure, aging is not always easy, but to me it’s a time when it’s easier to accept what may not be perfect in our lives so that we can concentrate on the reasons we should feel blessed.
Counting blessings instead of birthdays is a nice yardstick, don’t you think??
