BE PROUD OF YOUR AGE!

Getting older is a subject that most dont want to talk about; if we dont discuss it, maybe it will go away. Wrong! Age is a fact of life, regardless of where we are in the numbers game. Why do so many want to stay twenty or thirty or forty? Just as each season has its own beauty, so does each year or each decade. We can learn to look forward to the coming years instead of dreading them.

Up to our early teens, we are children playing grown up. We absolutely cant wait to be an adult. As an adult, whatever age that is, means that we have bigger decisions and more responsibility.

For many of us, twenty was a time of rash decisions, which might have brought painful consequences. When we arrive at the point of being an adult, we sometimes refuse to face any responsibility and often make worse decisions. This can mean more consequences we might not like.

Life is not a race to see who can get there first. We already are. We can relax about the fact of getting older and enjoy every year that we are given.

We waste so much time as we plan ahead on what we will or wont do. We might not have tomorrow; none of us can be certain. We spend the present making plans for the future. When we have those set in our minds, we waste today as we regret yesterday. We throw the time away as if we dont want or need it!

When we have rough patches in our lives, as all of us do, we continue to waste today as we dread tomorrow and are often disgusted by the past. Can we gain anything by those attitudes? We can fret until we turn purple and nothing will change. The situation wont get better; we wont grow an inch taller and we still have to face the results of our actions.

With all these decisions, why not decide to learn more about enjoying life in the now? As one guy stated, If I wake up, its a good day. We are given the gift of each day and we whine and moan all the way through it! Have we really become adults or are we acting like children?

When we are planning a vacation trip we decide where we are going, where we will stay and what we will do when we get there. Do we decide somewhere along the line that we dont want to finish the trip? Do we want to enjoy only the beginning and maybe the middle? Isnt that silly! Wouldnt we laugh if someone suggested that for our vacation? Yet we seem to prefer that when it refers to getting older.

As we travel on our pathway of life, do we prefer the beginning and the middle of the journey? The end of our trip can be pleasant, enjoyable, fun, rewarding, challenging, fulfilling and more. Why would we want to miss all that? These days can be more wonderful than our earlier ones. Our attitudes determine the results. If we think negative, so our days will be.

When we learn to appreciate life for what it is, a gift given to us to open and explore, then we can be grateful for each day. We dont stop living the moment we get on Medicare! Truthfully, the best might be yet to come!

Instead of moping through each day, we should treat those hours as if we cant bear to lose them! That is what we often do, not only lose them but actually throw them away! We know that we wont be able to pick them up again. Only later do we realize what that mistake has cost us.

We could take a lesson from a clock; keep ticking day after day, never trying to rush or slow anything but just living the moment. When we learn to do that, life will be more fulfilling and rewarding. We wont fret about the past or the future, but simply enjoy the present regardless of our age. The word present can have the same meaning as the word gift and that is exactly what we have: the gift of life given to us by God.