Getting Older Every Day

What seems obvious but is hard to live out is the way our bodies fail us, eventually. Each of my friends has health issues, if not for herself, then with her spouse. We can all whine together now in this stage of life about the cost of health care, and the restrictions poor health place on our activities. We can complain about how the world is being run as we withdraw from it, for surely we did it better when we were in charge, right?

What is a better response to this inevitable end? What have I learned so far?

1. Don’t talk about health except with selected few. Listen to your friends. Younger people really don’t want to hear about it. They don’t identify with such issues, yet.
2. Pay attention to current events in the news and sports, so you can talk about today. Be interested in their lives. Vote. Write letters to the editors. Share your wisdom in appropriate ways.
3. Stay current with technology. Cell phones, HD, email, Twitter, are here to stay in this form or morphed into another.
4. Be a model to the next generation. Take care of yourself and your spouse and your friends in their needy times. Be present to them.
5. Be as healthy as you can by exercising daily and eating a healthy diet. Stop excusing your bad habits, and replace them with fruits, vegetables and moderate portions.
6. Develop waiting room activities: knit, quilt, catch up on reading. Boredom is a state of mind.
7. Make eye contact so you can smile and talk to others. They are ill and scared too. See these as Divine Encounters.
8. If night driving is out, arrange to see plays, eat out, or otherwise be entertained in the day time. Afternoon shows are just as good.
9. Give up driving when your responses are too slow for safety of everyone on the road. If you are having minor accidents or getting lost, take that seriously.
10. Sign and prominently display a POLST agreement, so everyone will know not to go to extreme lengths in prolonging your life.
11. Clear out the junk in your spaces.
12. Go for quality of experience, not quantity.
13. Learn something new every day.

Spiritually, learn to meditate or pray. Study your scriptures. You aren’t the first person to grow old.

Forgive everyone everything, all the way back in life, to anything you remember.

Show an attitude of gratitude to those in your life today.

Hug someone every day.

---------------------------------------------------Comments & Questions? Email: womenbefriends@yahoo.com