Who's Getting Older?

If your reading this column in the week its published, I will just have celebrated my 71 years on the planet.  Here’s the good news:  I’m considered “young” old.  In the popular vernacular, I won’t be “old” old until I reach 80; if I make it.

I’ve learned a few lessons by living seven decades and one year.  The first one is to accept your age.  I get a big laugh from reading topics like, “exercise can keep you young”.  You see, the unavoidable truth is that you can’t stop the process.  So enjoy it.  Lots of my family and friends are gone already so I feel lucky to still be here. 

Another lesson I’ve learned:  Enjoy those special people in your life.  I miss my family and old friends who have passed on.  Wish I could have just one more afternoon with them.  There is so much I’d like to ask and tell them.  So many old memories that I’d like to re-live with them.   My advice:  Don’t waste these precious moments you have with others.  And for goodness sake, when it comes to the people you love, don’t let their tiny personal annoying habits stop you from being with them.  We all have annoying habits.

Life is short.  Even if you live a long time.  I remember one day, playing in my front yard on North 21^st street.  I must have been about ten.  The idea of my mortality had just taken a position on my right shoulder.  It whispered into my ear, “how long do you think you will live”?  I answered, “thirty years would be a good life.”  Boy was I naïve.  Here I am at 71 thinking that another thirty years would be a good life.  You see, no matter what we say would be a good long life, when we get there, we’ll change our minds.  The lesson: Don’t waste a single day worrying about anything.  Ninety nine and ninety nine hundredths percent of my worries never materialized.  Worry is just a pre-occupation that takes you away from the present moment.  I know.  I’m a “worrying” expert.  It isn’t worth a single lost moment.

I’ve been blessed with four wonderful children and five beautiful grandchildren.  There is nothing that pleases me more than being with them.  But they live in four different areas of the country so it’s a rare happening to see them all at once.  So when people say to me, “after you’ve lived in so many great places, why did you return to Herrin”?  I say, because this is where all my oldest friends and memories are.  That’s why I love Festa and Homecoming.  I get to see even more old friends.    

Finally, I’ve learned that honesty is something that matures as we do.  Sometimes we think we can hide cruelty in honesty.  We can’t.  Cruelty disguised as honesty is simply cruel.  To be honest my memories here are good and bad.  But they are my memories.  They make me who I am.  I can’t experience some and not others.  To be honest, the hometown of my youth was not exactly as I wanted it to be.    

I’ve learned not to have illusions about the world being exactly as I want it to be.  In the real world, what is, is and what isn’t, isn’t.  Somehow that idea has given me peace because I know that life will not conform to my expectations of it.  The one privilege that life gives me is to choose how I will react to it.  I can struggle with it, and miss what’s really happening.  Or I can accept it as it is and experience it.  I choose the latter.  I’m “young” old and I take great pleasure in that fact.  There is great dignity in aging if we accept what is. (I dedicate this column to my family and friends; the people I love)

Robert DeFilippis