REFLECTIONS ON MY 78th BIRTHDAY
"As you get older, three things happen. The first is your memory goes,
and I can't remember the other two."
Norman Wisdom
(comedian)
I spend a lot of time thinking - maybe too much sometime? One of the advantages of living alone is having large blocks of time to journal, blog, read, write books and produce homilies. All of those things take a lot of thinking, reading, pondering, reflecting, remembering, planning, wondering and worrying.
One of the things that occurs to me all the time these days is how fast time is flying. It started a few years ago, when I was in the middle of telling someone something about a past event. I was thinking that it happened maybe three or four years ago, only to be told that it actually happened ten years ago! I couldn't believe it without some personal research! As it turned out, they were right!
About a year ago, my computer started sending me daily posts called "On This Day." It is a copy of the photos that I had taken that day - three, four, five or up to nine or ten years ago. Almost every day when I look through the "photos of the day," I find it almost impossible to believe that that many years have passed since I originally took some of those pictures!
These days, it seems that every other day is Thursday and time to get ready for another weekend!
I am also beginning to cringe when I see myself in casual videos and photographs! To me, I look more and more like somebody else. It doesn't help my cause when people ask my age and I answer "I will be 78 on my next birthday," instead of simply saying that "I am 77!" It also doesn't help either to stare at my 1970 ordination class photo and start counting how many of them are already dead!
Now, with a new "no time-change law" taking effect, I can't even look forward to "falling back an hour" every fall!
I always thought old age was for other people, but the facts are clear enough! It's time for me to wake up and smell the coffee and continue, even more fervently, making the most of the time I have left! With that said, it's useless for any of us to become paranoid about how fast we are getting old. Let's not obsess about how close we are to dying. Rather, let's obsess about making the most of whatever time we have left!
"You know you're old when the candles cost more than the cake."
Bob Hope
(comedian)
"Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you.
Be grateful if it happens in that order."
David Gerrold
(author)
At my age, I do what Mark Twain did. I get my daily paper, look at the obituaries page
and if I’m not there, I carry on as usual."
Patrick Moore
(astronomer)
What I hope they will say about me!
click on the arrow and expand the video below
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