I heard somewhere that researchers have discovered a key element
for living a long life: Keep having birthday parties. And be sure to be in
attendance.
The alternative is to depart from the scene and have other
people continue to commemorate your birthday, as we do with George Washington,
Elvis and others, even though they’re no longer around to join the celebration.
But the reality is, if you live long enough, aging is
inevitable. It’s something to face – and hopefully, to embrace. This should be
the case even though our society seems fixated on youth. Every year newer and
fresher starlets are trotted out. Many advertisers tend to direct their
messages toward teens and 20-somethings. Out with the old and in with the new,
as they say.
Jennifer Lawrence, star of the “Hunger Games” trilogy, “American
Hustle,” “Silver Linings Playbook” – and it seems about half of the movies
being released by Hollywood these days – is the current darling of the younger
set in the world of entertainment. She’s 24 and right now, the poster child for
America’s youth movement. But for us all, time continues its relentless march
and before we know it, Ms. Lawrence will start sporting the occasional wrinkle
and find herself headed down the same path as another Jennifer – Aniston – who,
believe it or not, lacks just a few years from qualifying for AARP membership!
I think Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw summarized many
of our sentiments when he said, “Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on
children.”
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| My aunt and uncle, Barbara and Joe Tamasy, shown with a relative during a visit to Veszprem, Hungary, were examples of embracing the aging process. |
Being a young person is filled with its awkward moments,
encountering experiences for the first time and figuring out what to do with
them. But it’s the same for those of us who are aging. We’ve never been this
way before. The spring in our step isn’t the same, we’re not as agile, we can’t
jump as high or fast – and dare not do it anyway, for fear of breaking or
straining something.
There’s a whole array of products out there we never needed
before, but now we examine them with interests – ointments, medications,
cushions, sight and hearing aids. Our physicians tell us how well
we’re doing “for our age.” As the late Phyllis Diller said, “Maybe it's true that life begins at fifty. But everything else starts
to wear out, fall out, or spread out.”
But again, aging shouldn’t
be something we face with regret and trepidation. It’s to be embraced. Poet
Robert Browning wrote, “Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.” We’ve never
been here before, so we don’t know what great adventures still lay ahead.
For one thing, most older
people possess a treasure of wisdom they lacked in their earlier years. Wisdom,
someone has said, comes from making good decisions. And being able to make good
decisions came from making bad decisions – which we all have made in abundance!
Then we have decades of
accumulated experiences we can continue to enjoy and benefit from. Author
Madeleine L’Engle expressed it this way: “The
great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages
you've been.”
Most of all, the Bible affirms
aging should be regarded as a gift, not a consequence of living a long time. Romans
12:2 says we’re to “be
transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and
approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.” And as a wise friend of mine pointed out, this includes
the aging process.
The Scriptures tell us that in one sense, “50 shades of
gray” is a desirable state: “The glory of
young men is their strength, gray hair the splendor of the old” (Proverbs
20:29).
And the wisdom acquired through the passage of years can pay
rich dividends, as Proverbs 24:3-4 affirms: “By
wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through
knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.” Just as
Rome was not built in a day, neither is a full, noble and rewarding life.
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