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A reporter was interviewing a 104-year-young woman. “And what do you think is the best thing about 104?” the journalist asked.
“No peer pressure,” she replied.
When I was in college, I worked in an after school daycare center with a marvelous woman in her mid-seventies. One day she was complaining about her age. “All my friends are old and crippled,” she remarked. “They’re either crippled in their legs or crippled in their minds.”
I know that growing older is not easy, at any age. Columnist Dave Barry talked about it when he turned 40. “If I don’t warm up before throwing a football,” he said, “I have to wait approximately until the next presidential administration before I attempt to do this again.”
But even with its aches and pains and a variety of other problems, aging does have an upside. Sister Mary Gemma Brunke has so beautifully written:
“It is the old apple trees that are decked with the loveliest blossoms. It is the ancient redwoods that rise to majestic heights. It is the old violins that produce the richest tones. It is the aged wine that tastes the sweetest. It is ancient coins, stamps and furniture that people seek. It is the old friends that are loved the best. Thank God for the blessings of age and the wisdom, patience and maturity that go with it. Old is wonderful!”
“Beautiful people are acts of nature,” it has been said, “but beautiful old people are works of art.”
I hope someday to be a work of art.
-- Steve Goodier
Image: flickr.com/Marjan Lazarevski
