Turning the big SIX OH

Now, I have an excuse for whining and complaining about all the aches, pains, fatigue, insomnia, mental lapses and the general sense of dilapidation—-I turned sixty on September 9.  Like the twenty-foot water walls lashed toward the Texas coastline by Hurricane Ike, my constantly degrading physical state has not happened immediately, but it has been gathering momentum for the last thirty or so years.  Unbelievable.  I remember how old I thought my Dad was when he had his sixtieth birthday.  Now, thirty-five years later, I know.  (Actually, he stayed pretty young in his sixties, but he didn’t take care of his health as closely as he should have.  I, on the other hand, get a regular six month checkup and I keep tabs on all the major areas of my body that typically become trouble spots as a man ages.)

You can imagine, then, how relieved I was when it was announced to me that the powers that be have officially set the age when one is “old” as eighty!  Thank God!  I have twenty more years of middle age…functionality, lucidity, coherency, preaching, teaching, leading, golf, travel, eating and the broad enjoyment of life at the save level as I have experienced it for most of my adult life.  I am doing my best to ignore the suspicion that the intervening years will go by even faster than the prior years. 

It does seem that the older one gets, decades become years and years become days.  Regardless, I intend to live life at the fastest pace, the highest level and the most productive output as I can manage into the foreseeable future.  Age is only a number for technicalities like Social Security, driver’s licenses and biographies.  Age is not a reference point for quality of life and the size of contributions one can make to the world around him. 

The only exception to the last paragraph would be whenever I don’t feel like doing something.  Then I can always back up to the “I’m in my sixties” argument.  And nobody will say a word.