On May 3, 2016, I turned 80, and I will never be that young again. When I said to a friend, “80 sounds pretty old.” She lovingly replied, “That’s because 80 is old.” “But,” she added, “Attitude is everything!”
Invariably, when I tell someone, “I’m 80.” She will say, “You don’t look 80.” And then I reply, “What does 80 look like?” So far, I haven’t received a satisfactory answer. Consequently, I tried an experiment. Yesterday, when chatting with a young fellow on the hiking trail, I told him that “Tomorrow is my birthday.” He said, “How old will you be?” and I replied, “I will be 90 years old.” “Wow!” he said. “You don’t look any older than 70.” So, instead of earning 10 youthful years, I gained 20. Good trick!
I had a friend, of blessed memory, who was a good driver into her early 90s. Her motto, before getting behind the wheel of her car, was, “Be mindful!” She was a former librarian. I used to say, “You know everything.” And she would reply, “No, I don’t know everything, but I know how to find almost everything. As long as I can still find most everything, I feel lucky.”
When I was a child, my Father would buy me little picture books, that, when I flipped the pages, would make the drawn characters look as if they were moving quickly. It was a trick of the eye. Turning 80 is much like flipping those pages, and visualizing the good times and not so good times in my past years as they move quickly by---not a trick of the eye---but a trick of time.
So what have I learned? My life has had its ups and downs, but it has been quite rewarding thus far. I have learned that life is not fair, and that no one leads a charmed life. Yes, I am blessed with good genes, but even good genes have a shelf life.
So, I plan to count my blessings, and try to learn at least one new thing each day.
Today, I saw a man hiking on my rugged mountain trail. He was dressed in a bathing suit, carrying a backpack, and trudging along the rocky (sometimes snake infested) trail barefoot. He probably had taken a wrong turn and thought he was in San Diego. So, what did I learn from this encounter? I learned that: “A person can only be young once---but you can be a stupid jackass forever!”
Esther Blumenfeld (“If you survive long enough, you’re revered—rather like an old building.”) Katherine Hepburn