Aging with Grace

Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

Satchel Paige

Bret Harte wrote, ‘We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning.” The first time I read this I thought it was extraordinarily cynical. Of course, no one lives forever, however letting the inevitability of aging define ones life seems like a depressing way to live. As I become older, I recognize years go by in the blink of an eye. We can’t slow down time. We do have the option of deciding how we are going to deal with the reality of aging.

I was taught that whatever life brings you, if there is nothing you can do to change it, you accept it and move on. Aging certainly qualifies as one of those things you can’t change. I don’t know that I believe sixty is the new forty. I do believe that we are living longer, we’re healthier and able to do more. Why not enjoy it? The only one who really gets to decide how you live your life, is you. You’re right, you can’t stop the clock. You can decide what you’re going to do with the time you have. People in their seventies and eighties go back to school, open businesses, travel, run marathons. It may be we are handicapped not by our age, but the way in which we perceive it.