Disciplined Life

Numerous authors have addressed the matter of aging and retirement even if their common themes and assignments do not engage it.  There is wide disagreement on when old age begins, and how it ought to be treated.  In centuries past elders were treated with honor, partly because long life was taken as a gift of God – even included in some of the promises of God.  Today we tend to warehouse the elderly, and this does not mean that the housing is poor.  Many elders like it that way, and so do the younger members of the family. 

One author stated: I am old.  I am sixty-nine years old.  I’m not really old, of course.  Really old is eighty.  The writer believed that a young respondent would say that she was old at sixty-nine.  There has been general agreement that eighty is old.  Jesus referred to it as an extension of a norm which he named to be seventy years.  He was speaking to a people whose average life span may have been less than forty years.  There were those found in their own families, who lived long and the young took note of it, if choice and long life were taken seriously.  The differentials of those who survived childbirth and infancy, untreated disease, accident and warfare may not have been included in population perceptions as they are presently.

A common question posed to elders is: If you were to live your life over again, what would your life program look like?  After asking and being asked the questions I have formed a pattern that I believe makes a world of difference for society.  Usually the disciplines pointing to long life will meet the emergencies of life, and there will always be emergencies.  Much of the success of persons in their lives comes from good parenting and education for life.  Education is secondary for much of professional competency.  It is first for finding a life worth living, not a training process for making a living.  If I were robbed of proper parenting education I would make extra effort to find persons who model life as it ought to be lived and draw from that source.  In the passing of the years I have been surprised how many engaged couples I have counseled who do not name their parents as models for their own anticipated marriages.

1. I would follow a regimen for health that related primarily to good nutrition, exercise and proper rest.

2. I would attend to the important matters of my life before accepting entertaining distractions.

3. I would choose to meet my obligations before taking on new projects so to finish what I began.

4. I would give ten percent of my income to God, and save the same amount, living on 80 percent.  The eighty percent would become the 100% divided for living expenses – also in percentages for standards.

5. I would make sure there were communications and relationship periods with my mate, children and others so to learn the benefits of love, respect, human fellowship to understanding and wisdom.  I would relate communications to questions to learn motivations and responses – so to meet life with other persons drawing upon thought, love, and life courage to proper resolutions.  The concept has long been cast: I will weep with those who weep and laugh with those who laugh – and think with those who think.

6. I would learn the health of the spiritual life in prayer, taking church seriously, reading helpful and educative materials especially related to the lives of involved and successful persons in the context of their choices, accenting the positives and affirmations of life, resisting the negative and draining influences.

7. I would want to live morally upright so not to admit negative habits to rob me of the potential of a healthy mind in a healthy body.  In this I would want to learn righteousness, and its margins as well as substance. There is more, but this is enough to invite God to assist me to become the person he wants me to be, and the person I want to be.  The length of life doesn’t seem so important to me.  Quality is.  A determined ideal for the Apostle Paul was found in excellence.  We should seek for it in ourselves so to better lives.