Ahhh yes, “the golden years”…  golden my…er..backside.  Well, it’s definitely not all bad, just as with youth, there are pros and cons.  With youth, your backside is still, shall we say “golden and perkey”… with age, not so much…but the good news is…we don’t care!  With youth we try to keep up with the “Jones”…with age, we forget who the “Jones” even are!  With youth, we run around frantically and anxiously…getting an education, getting a spouse, finding a  job, buying a home, starting a family, regretting starting a family…. And on and on.  With age, comes a sense of peace, a sense of tranquility, a sense of accomplishment, a sense of experience, and the ability to slow down without guilt.

These are the things that should come with age anyways, if we allow ourselves to let go, to just be, to break free of past failures or regrets that can’t be changed.  And even if those past failures could be changed, our life’s course, encompassing our successes, our accomplishments, our loves, would probably an very most likely be changed as a result.

Getting older or aging means something different to us all and it occurs at different times and varying paces for us all.  It can and should be viewed as a great blessing, an intriguing journey, the greatest education and learning experience of our lives. Take a minute and think back on some of your experiences, especially the unpleasant ones and how you coped with them and persevered and how you came out of darkness and found light, and also learned how not to let that certain light bulb burn out again.  Now that’s something to be proud of my friends, very proud.

And let’s face it, getting older is just plain funny.  You find yourselves doing or saying things that you’d NEVER thought you’d do or say things that remind you of…gasp!…your MOTHER!  But all we can do is laugh…laugh and listen, because there are very few ways to enlightenment that can be gained by being quiet and just listening to a warm soul that has been around the block a time or two.

So let’s share our stories, our lessons, our experiences…and especially the funny quirky things that we now experience and observe…and have the time to stop and just laugh…