Embracing age or enduring it
“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” George Eliot.
World Health gives us a reprieve from aging too soon with their revision of age categories: 1-17 – Underage, 18-65 – Youth or Young People, 66-79 – Middle Age, 80-99 – Elderly or Senior, and 100 plus – Long-lived Elderly.
These categories go a long way to explaining why some young people take so long to mature and why some never make it. I’m happy to say I am now a senior.
Humour helps us stay young. Check out the following thoughts:
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You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, “See if you can blow this out.” Jerry Seinfeld
•Regular naps prevent old age, especially if you take them while driving. Author Unknown
•At my age, flowers scare me. George Burns
•How young can you die of old age? Steven Wright
Dick Van Dyke is reaching one hundred in December. He shares wisdom worth exploring. “For the vast majority of my years I have been in what I can only describe as a full-on bear hug with the experience of living. Being alive has been doing life not like a job but rather like a giant playground.”
He still hits the gym three times a week. He still sings, still dances. “If I miss too many gym days … I really can feel it — a stiffness creeping in here and there. If I let that set in, well, God help me,” Van Dyke says. (from “Dick Van Dyke on aging with hope and humour,” Cerith Gardiner).
We glean more wisdom from Gardiner’s article. Life is something to embrace, not endure, Van Dyke says. Most of his lifelong friends are gone; his body doesn’t move the way it once did. Travel takes too much of him. He must decline many invitations. Yet this is not the end of the story; it is a chapter.
His views on longevity invite to a deeper purpose. The playground metaphor matters: it’s an active place, a field of possibility. He is saying, especially to seniors, life still invites you to play, to engage, to love, to serve.
His faith vision says it’s about being transformed by time, filled with more perspective, more capacity for gratitude, and more readiness to serve. Even the quiet days become sacred. As Psalm 90:12 invites: “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
Embrace the present as a gift, not a comparison to the past; feel the loss even while holding the hope; choose joy not as ignorance of pain but as fidelity amidst it; believe that the best of your story might still be ahead. Tomorrow is another day on the playground.
In Pastor Volodya's Post on Facebook we find additional thoughts on joy in old age. Some of what we counted on to bring us joy is just an illusion. Children? They have their own lives now. Health? It slips away like water in a leaky bucket. Health is not eternal. It is your main job. “Everything else means nothing if you can’t get out of bed,” Volodya says.
And God continues to call us to service. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).
“Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary” (Isaiah 40:31).
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