Age need not be a deterrent to the pursuit of our goal. Nor should it hamper our enthusiasm in furtherance to continue improvement or excellence of it. Matter of fact is, we can even start venturing on new ideas. Starting young or not-so-young in aiming for a goal makes negligible or no difference. What matters is our attitude towards our aim, that it be positive. We must not deduce thinking that we might not realize our goal due to our age. We must leave everything in the hands of the Almighty Creator whom we trust. He is in the best position to know what is best for us. God did not plant an idea into our mind with a pre-condition that we must be young to aim for a certain goal. Otherwise, He wouldn’t have done so.
Faith and trust in the Almighty should be the factors that determine our decision to continue pursuing our goal, not our age.
Growing old is all in the mind if we let it be. Yes, it’s visible when we grow old. But these changes are only on our physique. Our actions and reflexes may be slower than before. Our hair may be thinner and gray. Our skin may be dry and wrinkled. But our mind and spirit will remain young and vibrant as ever, even wiser than ever.
Speaking of old age, allow me to tickle your funny bone. There’s this funny thing about growing old, we can’t move our hands and feet when we want them to (if we’ve got arthritis), but they keep on moving when we don’t want them to (uncontrolled shaking and trembling). Speaking of thinning hair when we grow old, we beg our hair to stay on our head. It’s the opposite when we were young, we beg our thick and unruly hair to leave our head.
Only the physical side of us gets old, the mental and spiritual sides are as young as ever.
Age or aging, as defined in the dictionary is synonymous to growing old. ‘Growing’ is a progressive word, so there is every reason for us to go with the flow, to be optimistic.
With age comes wisdom, maturity, and experience. How we choose to mature depends on how we think of ourselves. If we think we are non-productive, worn-out, and ruggedly unattractive, ridden with health problems, we will what we think we are. However, if we welcome age with a positive outlook, having emerged a wiser and more experienced person, full of wisdom and vitality in spite of age, this chapter of our life will bring even more excitement, looking forward to share our experiences with our grandchildren, the younger generation. What we choose to be, we will be. Only we can control ourselves. I see no reason why we would choose to be gloomy, feeling self-pity, and unproductive in senior age when we have the option to emerge bright and upbeat.
For this, we must be thankful to the Lord for giving us years of fruitful life. Obviously, the Lord has His reasons for keeping us productive and these reasons should keep us focused to excel in our goals. Let us not disappoint Him. Share experiences with the younger generation. Tell them both the good ones and even the not-so-good ones. Both ways, they will draw lessons from them. We are, in essence a living history library whom they can research from, being able to answer their inquisitive questions in person, sharing experiences which are far better that machine-produced information. And you know what makes our information unique compared to machine-produced ones? It can be filled with emotion and excitement. That will surely draw a ‘cool’ comment from youngsters. Cool, isn’t it?
When we have grandchildren and they start to call us grandpa or grandma, how we react to it is entirely up to us. It’s a choice between: the sound of useless, cranky, good-for-nothing, step-aside grandpa or grandma; or the sound of fun-filled, welcome, looking-forward-to, sunshine-drenched grandpa or grandma. What will your choice be?
If we choose to be negative, I will assure you, we would be banging our head against the wall, later on telling ourselves: “that was dumb, dumb, dumb”. A positive choice will leave our head with no lump (because we won’t be banging it against the wall), but a smile within our heart, a feeling that will make us say: “Lord, I’m a happy person. You can take me anytime you want to.”
I would like to use this space to leave a message to the children and grandchildren of seniors. Picture yourselves when you become grandparents someday. Would you like to be left alone living by yourselves, sent off to senior homes, feeling lonely and desolate, taken for granted as if you don’t exist anymore? Or do you want to be riddled with questions from wide-eyed children, running like a child as if childhood came the second time around (not the mental second childhood stuff), walking hand-in-hand with your loved ones on a flower-filled countryside and simply be happy? You can make a difference on how seniors feel.
Growing old can be rewarding.
Ageless Goal
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