Outliving Zeal
None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Aspects of Aging
One of the most disturbing aspects of aging is the growing inability to recall vitally important information—such as the gross national product of Liberia, the Greek alphabet, and where you put your slippers. This affliction becomes particularly pronounced when you go upstairs to get something. Halfway up, you realize that you have no idea of what you were going upstairs to get. Then—you have to decide whether to go back downstairs and try to remember what you needed, or continue on up and look for something that needs bringing down. Unable to decide, you resort to sitting on the landing and sulking, only to discover that you have completely forgotten whether you were originally upstairs going down or downstairs going up.
No Concert
Maturity is when you’re willing to stand in line to get out of going to a rock concert.
Never Again
I was fired because of my age. I’ll never make the mistake of being seventy again. –Casey Stengel
Perspective on Growing Older
Being as I’m now in my middle fifties, I occasionally give some thought to those years, down the road a ways, when I might want to retire. My financial advisor tells me I should give thought to making provision for those years if I want to stay out of the county poor farm. And whenever I have to attend to those sort of plans I sometimes get to thinking back over my career. I remember in particular 1956, and more than thirty years back. I was a middler at Fuller Seminary, married and with three little kids. That was the year I had my first surgery, the year I was beginning to think about my future pastoral career. Since then I have served some five churches, and I review with nostalgia and warmth those years of service since then. And I think about my gray hair. And I start to remember how I’m growing older. And then I remember that year in seminary and it dawns on me that in 1956 George Burns was already entering his sixties—and I don’t feel so old after all! –James S. Hewitt
Growing Older
As people grow older they tend to become more quiet. They have more to keep quiet about.
Aged but Healthy
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people and greatly assists in the circulation of the blood. –Logan Pearsall Smith
Less than Expected
Children are a comfort to you in your old age—but like your IRA, it’s nowhere as much as you expected.
Well Preserved
In a conversation with Woody Allen, Groucho Marx said he was often asked what he’d like people to be saying about him in a hundred years. “I know what I’d like them to say about me,” responded Woody. “I’d like them to say, ‘He looks good for his age.’”
Open and Ready to Learn
The Roman scholar Cato started to study Greek when he was over eighty. Someone asked why he tackled such a difficult task at his age. Cato said, “It’s the earliest age I have left.”
More Forms
An elderly woman was filling out an application for residency in a retirement village. She was a bit nervous answering all the questions about her health, fearing she might be refused admission. But, she finally finished the form and then signed her name and filled in the place where it asked for her current address. After “Zip” she printed firmly: “Normal for my age.”
Sharp and Open for the Future
A woman in a convalescent home was given a party to celebrate her one hundredth birthday. Her pastor came to offer his congratulations. Later the pastor said, “Her mind was keen and alert. When I arrived, she was completely caught up in the excitement of the birthday party. A reporter had come to interview her. And when he asked that high-spirited, one-hundred-year-old woman, ‘Do you have any children?’ she replied without hesitation, ‘Not yet!’”
Ages of Man
The seven decades of man: Spills, Drills, Thrills, Bills, Ills, Pills, and Wills.
Care for One’s Assets
If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.
Oldness and Conformity
One good thing about becoming ninety years old is that you’re not subject to much peer pressure.
Rossini in Retrospect
You know you’re a part of the older generation if you can’t hear the “William Tell Overture” without thinking of the Lone Ranger.
How Are You?
A common greeting these days is, “How are you?” The stereotype reply is, “Fine, and how are you?” I frequently give this reply to my friends who would be dismayed and bored if I tried to tell them the truth, for the edition of this jalopy which I call my body is getting worse and worse, and my friends recognize it and make mental note, “He is slipping fast.” No one comments on the obvious and colossal lie that it is.
This jalopy is getting into bad condition. The steering gear is to worn and wobbly that I have to use a cane to keep it from running off the road. The headlights are so dim that they show up only about a half or a third as much as they used to. The horn is a mere squawk. I only get about a tenth of the speed out of it that it gave a few years ago. And as for climbing hills, or even gentler slopes, the less said the better. It is clear that it is going to have to be junked one of these days. But the real person who lives inside this jalopy is a different story. God is much more real and His truth shines more brightly. The companionship of Christ is more constant through His Holy Spirit, and He holds out a hope for a new model, after this jalopy is junked.
This, I think, is what Paul had in mind when he spoke of the reward that God, the righteous Judge, would give him on that day. I think it is also what he was writing to the Philippians about his own body which was in a hazardous state: “I rejoice and I intend to rejoice. I hope all of you will rejoice with me.” Paul labeled his new model spiritual and eternal, as compared with our present model, physical and decaying. This then is the lively hope that I can have. I know I do not deserve a new model, and if God, the righteous Judge, determines that I should not have it, that is all right, too. In any case, Righteous Judge is His middle name, sandwiched between His first and last names, both of which are LOVE. So, I am fine, thank you. How are you? –Dr. Joseph Leroy Dodds to his granddaughter Margo
Young in the Mind
People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.
You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.
In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, and courage—so long are you young.
When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and only then, are you grown old—and then, indeed, as the ballad say, you just fade away.
The Hard Truth
We don’t become more moral as we grow older, we just choose our sins more carefully.
You Know You’re Getting Older when . . .
Almost everything hurts. What doesn’t hurt doesn’t work anymore. It feels like the morning after the night before, and you haven’t been anywhere. All the names in your little black book end in MD. You get winded playing chess. You look forward to a dull evening. You still chase women but have forgotten why. You turn out the lights for economic, not romantic reasons. Your knees buckle and your belt won’t. You are 17 around the neck, 42 around the waist, and 126 around the gold course. You sink your teeth into a steak and they stay there. You try to straighten the wrinkles in your socks and you find you aren’t wearing any. A little old gray-haired lady tries to help you across the street. She’s your wife.
If I Had My Life to Live Over
I’d dare to make more mistakes next time; I’d relax; I would limber up; I would be sillier than I have been this trip; I would take fewer things seriously; I would take more chances; I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers; I would eat more ice cream and less beans; I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I’s have fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I’m one of those people who lives sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I’ve had my moments, and if I had it to do over again, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d try to do nothing else, just moments, one after the other instead of living so many years ahead of time.
I’ve been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, hot water bottle, raincoat, and parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dinners; I would ride more merry-go-rounds; I would pick more daises. –An elderly woman
Retirement Plans
A newly hired consultant breezed into the personnel manager’s office and interrupted his conversation with another employee to ask how many of the company’s employees were approaching retirement age. The personnel manager said, “All of them. Not one of them is going the other way.”
Couples Apart
That time of life when a man will let his wife go anywhere as long as she doesn’t insist on his coming along.