Tag: Old age

The Rest Of My Life

Published on by Scott Williams6 Comments

Logan's Run (film)

I am getting shockingly old. I’m not quite sure how it happened but one day I was mildly cool (back when cool was a thing) and seemingly the next day I was old. How did this happen? I was always the younger, crazier, extremophile. I have a one year old grandchild now. What the hell happened!?

The older you get the faster time seems to go. This is not just an illusion, it’s a scientific fact that is just one more way aging sucks. When I was a teen life went on forever. I was never going to get old. I remember watching a rerun of Logan’s Run wherein people were zapped when they hit 25 (or went to heaven). I have a vivid recollection of thinking, “What’s the big deal, you’re 25!” Where did the time go?

There is an old cliché which goes something like this, “Make the rest of your life the best of your life.” It’s cheesy, as clichés are, but also contains a grain of truth. Have you ever noticed how old people tend to be a caricature of themselves? Their nose and ear hair aren’t the only things that keep growing. It seems like seniors tend to go one of two ways, either more bitter or more gracious. Some old people could teach classes on bitterness. The accumulated effect of tragedy and pain, age and trauma, just leaches the happy out of some older adults. The closer they come to death the less they seem to live. Maybe this is nature’s way of preparing us for death but I really don’t want anything to do with it.

I remember some years ago seeing a religious punk band in the states and noticing that there was this really really old guy dancing in the front row with piercings, and leather and a shaved head. It seemed kind of comical until I found out this was his band. The kids on stage were being mentored by this aging Fonzie. When I spoke to them about him they suddenly perked up and stared at me, straight in the eye. This guy was their hero. He was the coolest old fart they had ever met. They worshiped the ground this geriatric walked on. This was their pastor, their mentor, their biggest fan and supporter. I was inspired.

I want to be like that old dude. I want to live my second half in such a way that shocks the conservatives and inspires the youth. I want to suck the marrow out of life and leave on a thunderbolt. No one wants to look back at their life and wish they had given it a better effort. I may never be rich or famous but I want to be effective, leave a legacy, change lives. There has to be more to life than accumulating a bunch of junk and arriving at death with a good-looking corpse.

i occasionally show up at parties my kids go to. Don’t get me wrong, I have a standing invitation. My boys hang out with people I like and who give me a measure of respect, probably because I am so damn old. It’s an amazing experience, hanging out with people half my age who appear actually happy to see me. I get to play the icon for a few minutes, the one old fart who is having a good time with them on a Saturday night.

Someday, when I am much older, I want to still show up at the party for a good time. I can’t stop the aging process but I can decide what kind of old fart I want to be. Making the next part of my life the best part of my life is entirely my choice. I have some things I never had before, things like wisdom and experience which others find helpful. It’s up to me whether or not anyone will want to listen.

You Just Got Hit

Published on by Scott Williams3 Comments

Bad day“They have a saying in boxing – everyone has a plan till they get hit… well guess what, you just got hit. Whether or not you get up is up to you.”  from The Ghost And The Darkness

I remember, years ago, hearing a minister talking about the worst day he ever had. I won’t go into details but suffice to say, it wasn’t much of a day. No one died, nothing bad happened. He was inconvenienced. I remember hearing him and thinking, “That’s the best you got?”

Some people get through lives relatively unscathed. I don’t know them personally but that’s the rumor. For the rest of us, however, life is a series of adventures and misadventures. I have a theory that almost everyone has experienced some form of trauma by the time they are forty. I can’t prove this but it seems to be true in the world I live. To quote the greatest family movie of all time, The Princess Bride, “Life is pain highness, anyone who says different is selling you something.”

We all get hit, from time to time. The older I get the more I notice how differently my life has turned out than I had anticipated. You can have all the plans in the world but they won’t help you if you get Fibromyalgia, or cancer, or are in a car accident. We are all just one bad moment from having our lives drastically changed. Twelve years ago I had my life all planned out, then I got hit. Some hits you never fully recover from. Perhaps that shouldn’t even be the goal. Trauma changes us. The trick may be to use situations we hate to change us in the right direction.

Life isn’t fair. Sometimes the rich do get richer and the pretty people do get all the breaks. Sometimes the jerks yand the liars do get ahead and there really seems to be no justice in the world. The Nortel legal battle in Canada, among others, demonstrates that the laws that apply to some, do not necessarily apply to the rich. The right set of high-priced lawyers changes everything.

Have you ever noticed that rich men usually have better hair? There is no justice.

It’s easy to get bitter.

But it doesn’t help one bit.

Have you ever noticed that the older people get the more they become a caricature of themselves? It is as if our personalities are water-soluble and as we age more and more of the water evaporates, leaving us with more “us”. As the capacity to exercise social restraint wears away you begin to see who that person really is. Old people seem to go one of two ways; either they become more gracious, more beautiful, or they get more bitter. So many bitter people.

I do not want to become bitter as I grow older. Already I can see the my tendency to become judgmental, or critical, or just grouchy. There have been people who have hurt me deeply and my natural inclination is to hold grudges and carry that pain forever. Perhaps I am not alone in this.

At the end of the day, like most things, it is about choice. Choice and a great deal of hard work. Left to our own devices many of us will gradually slip further and further towards negativity. Awareness is important. Hard work is much more important. Working on myself cannot, must not, be something I only do when I need to get something or someone. My life is not a thing to be fixed, it is a project to be nourished.

I know from personal experience how damaging it can be to live with bitterness and unforgiveness. I like to say it’s like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. And it really is that harmful to us to live this way.
Joyce Meyer

Related articles