Well, once again, it’s my birthday. I guess when your birthday comes around, it represents another year of growth and lessons learned — and — the opportunity to pause, reflect and appreciate all that we are — and have been. Birthdays also serve as a convenient time to reflect on what’s been accomplished or achieved over the past year.
Growing old is a privilege — everyone is getting older, but not everyone is growing older. So since it’s my birthday I thought I’d talk about what I’d like to be when I grow old….
I guess one of the things I think is ok about getting old is that you can, in (hopefully) subtle ways thumb your nose at convention with fewer consequences than when you were younger. Maybe that’s a good goal for when I get old.
In many cultures, and in the past around here, older people were revered as the carriers of wisdom and the archivists of the group’s knowledge and experience. Today — not so much. People probably figure any knowledge old people have is outdated. I’ll try not to fall into the “dated” category.
I’ve noticed that the least interesting older people that I know are the ones that do the same things, have the same conversations and express the same opinions — over and over and over. This is a hard one, but I’ll try to stay current and not sound like a broken record from the past.
I think that generally old people are largely expected to be dignified and respectable — and usually clueless…. and not much else. I was never dignified — or respectable — so I’m not going to start when I’m old. I’ll probably continue to be clueless, but I’m not going the dignified route.
So what do I want to be when I grow old? I want to be my own person, do my own thing, try to make myself (and others) happy, make use of what I’ve learned over the years, learn new things, believe what I know to be true, surround myself with good company — and continue to have fun.
Keep checking back here to see if when I get old, I’ve achieved my goals.
But today’s only my 85th birthday — let the celebration begin.
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