LET YOUTH SEE SOMETHING WORTH LOOKING FORWARD TO

With time and luck, we arrive at wisdom. We learn what works, and what’s worthless. Occasionally it comes easily, but as philosopher Will Rodgers, summed it up:

” Some of us can read about good advice, or we may learn from observation, but the rest have to pee on the electric fence to find out for ourselves.

What’s a life of fence peeing taught me?

1.) To preserve a childlike interest in life. Show curiosity and a willingness to Google things that prick your imagination.

2.) Physical Activity. You gotta move that old bod. No napping in the gym’s parking lot (as I did). Go in.

3.) Relationships Relationships Relationships. Women do better than we guys do. Pick up the cell. Call a buddy for lunch. Don’t wait for his call.

You don’t fail until you give up

4.) Keep a persistent attitude: You never fail till you give up.

5.) Cicero said it 2000 years ago, and he must be right. He saw intrinsic value in aging:

“How wonderful it is for the soul when—after so many struggles with lust, ambition, strife, quarreling and other passions—these battles are at last ended and it can return . . . to live within itself,”

“Cato Maior de Senectute.” Cicero

6.) That hobby you once enjoyed can live again. Now you’re free to pull out all the stops. You’ll be an amateur, but that’s good. You’re doing it for love. I still need discovery, a challenge or a purpose to achieve satisfaction and daily. Oboe practice does it for me.

7.) The NY Times wrote something a few months ago that has a ring to it:

“I’d rather think that elder happiness is an accomplishment, not a condition, that people get better at living through effort, by mastering specific skills. I’d like to think that people get steadily better at handling life’s challenges. In middle age, they are confronted by stressful challenges they can’t control, like having teenage children. But, in old age, they have more control over the challenges they will tackle and they get even better at addressing them.      NYT Columnist David Brooks

8. Retirement brings free time, but never enough for anxiety or panic. Youth wants to see you enjoying happiness, not sweating. Getting old shouldn’t suck.

Check out another post I wrote which explains another life lesson you learn with wisdom:

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