Growing old requires education so to become tolerant of emerging generations.  Historically the gift of long life was seen as given of God for appropriate conduct, so to have some influence with God.  Aged persons were seen as important to a community for counsel, peace, problem solving and benediction.  The modernization of life with industrialization, national economies, changing family profiles and values, and a half dozen or so other influences, the aged have become somewhat superfluous.  They even become, for some analysts, a burden to be insulted for requiring maintenance resources.  I have read a number of these perceptions.  Only now and then are elders credited for the enormous infrastructure ceded to the future, to the improved order of things that, if properly utilized create a way of life superior to that of kings and potentates of bygone centuries.  What to do?  Accept it all, and get on with the end of life for which the earlier part was made.  The following may help in finding the joy of living in the decrepit period of life.

  1. Don’t try to parent your children or grandchildren when they have grown up – only God knows you are right.
  2. Don’t fret when the grandchildren absent themselves from your life – you will know that their parents are providing everything they ask for.
  3. Don’t worry if you are involved in a car accident – it’s not your fault if your car isn’t moving.
  4. Don’t try too hard to listen to what others say – they won’t mumble loudly enough for you to hear it anyway.
  5. Don’t hesitate to use human frailty to advantage – since you’re being credited for it anyway.
  6. Don’t refuse to go to the front of the line – the younger people feel virtuous in the service of the weak.
  7. Don’t think about your appearance – few persons dress well in these times. (Llewellyn King wrote: The Grunging of America, which started with: . . . . the unwashed, has now reached the well-scrubbed.)
  8. Don’t join the complainers about bad weather – ol’ folks make it a reason to make home cozier.
  9. Don’t run to keep up – most persons are already ahead of themselves, and their words are ahead of their thoughts.
  10. Don’t keep up with some styles – like women permitting hair to fall over one eye and men growing beard stubble.
  11. Don’t bother with a lot of ordinary television, and other media – unless you need to know how to violate the opposite sex, commit murder, yell at people, and reduce the dignity of your life with some of the nonsense.
  12. Don’t believe you will have poor health – unless you wish to shorten your longevity.
  13. Don’t avoid prayer – unless you prefer periodic despair, or believe meditation is a substitute.
  14. Don’t stop thinking because your memory is fading – unless you don’t want today to be better than yesterday.
  15. Don’t give up fun and games – unless you want to be a drudge.
  16. Don’t entertain gossip about anybody – unless you want to waste part of your limited and valuable life.
  17. Don’t fret about loved ones pressing you to give up the keys to the car – but call one of them to take you to the store the next day, with the longest list of items you ever authored.
  18. Don’t forget that hope in the Bible refers to immortal life – but you have to die to get it.
  19. Don’t ever say or feel that you are alone – unless you have left God in Christ out of your life.
  20. Don’t avoid adding to this list – unless you want younger generations to continue bungling along.

*Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020