“Take care that old age does not wrinkle your spirit even more than your face.”
–Michel de Montaigne
None of us can avoid the physical aging process, which eventually wrinkles our skin. It is an inevitable part of g r owi n g old. But we don’t have to allow it to wrinkle our heart and spirit. As we grow older, our physical capacity gradually diminishes, but our mental capacity and our emotions need not be affected.
Some people are just as sharp mentally when they are 90 years old as they were in their youth. And many have an even brighter outlook on life than people half their age. Our mental and emotional capacities do not have to diminish as we grow older, but they often do simply because we allow them to do so. Everybody seems to recognize the value of physical exercise in keeping our bodies in shape, but many fail to recognize the need to work at maintaining our mental and emotional capacities. We need to practice sound mental and emotional health right up to the day we die.
Every stage of life has both positive and negative aspects. When we are young, we have the enthusiasm of youth and, since our whole lives are ahead of us, the sky is the limit for our dreams. But there is also much insecurity in youth. We worry about such things as finding the right person to marry and choosing the right career. We worry that we will lose our jobs or become incapacitated and be unable to earn a good living. And there are so many other uncertainties.
In our senior years, most of these worries are behind us. We have had our failures along with our successes, but we have survived them. If we have children and grandchildren they can be a source of much joy. And we have the time to enjoy life. Once we are retired, we can spend time doing things we have always wanted to do, but for which we never had sufficient time before.
Some seniors find their last years their very happiest. Others are miserable during their last years because they have allowed the aging process to wrinkle their heart and spirit. Many things are beyond our control. Some of us have more serious health problems than others, and these factors are bound to influence our attitude. But if our only major problem is just that we have become old, we can continue to find happiness if we maintain the proper attitude.
Think about it.
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Copyright 2023
Allen W. Smith
