Old Age and Death?

Maybe it’s because of the radio programs I was listening to on the way home from church this early afternoon (To The Best of Our Knowledge on NPR).  Maybe it’s because I recently had a birthday that brings me closer to the big 60, and the big 70, and the big no more “0’s.”  Maybe it’s because the year is coming to an end; maybe it’s because of the quotation in my Franklin planner this morning, “A man is not old until his regrets take the place of dreams.”  Maybe it’s because of some of the wisdom my colleagues are sharing through the interviews I am conducting with them for my doctoral dissertation.  Maybe it’s because of the odd skin blemish that has appeared on my forearm, an area of my fair body that has gotten way too much sun over the years.

But I am thinking about old age and death.

One of my students asked me the other day when I would be done with my “education.”  I made some comment that your education is not over until you are in your coffin.  That was an offhand remark but worthwhile.  Many people die twenty or thirty years too early—their minds die, and their goals and dreams, and their hope and vision and interests, decades before their hearts stop beating.

I am old enough to have several grandchildren but don’t.  I am old enough that under the “old system,” when people retired at 62 and started drawing Social Security, I could start contemplating that.  I am old enough to be getting knee surgery (my knees are fine, thank you very much).  I am old enough to accept life as it is and make no plans to change it.

But thinking that way is as foreign to me as—as what?  Getting a tattoo, perhaps, or bungee jumping (a friend in his 60s recently did that!), but beyond those kinds of things I have lots of dreams, goals, plans, hopes, and visions.  I may get my teeth fixed!  I may stop eating meat! I want to take swimming lessons at the Y, and guitar lessons!  I am in a doctoral program!  I want to spend the summer in a country where I can help missionaries by teaching English! 

To anyone reading this, please don’t think this post is about me.  It is my encouragement to you to shake off, whatever your age, the belief or feeling that your life in over, or on the downhill slide, or that you should plan for retirement (other than financially, of course), or that you should sit and watch TV.  Whatever time you have left, and absolutely none of us knows how long we have left to live, make plans, execute the plans, don’t sit down (metaphorically speaking), turn off the TV, go for a walk, learn something.