Enjoy the ride.
One side effect of getting older is age. It’s natural. Things get old, and they wear out. If you leave a 47 Packard out on your front lawn long enough, it’ll rust. Even if you drive it every Sunday to church, keep the oil changed, and do regular tune ups, it’ll still rust. You can buff it out, rework the metal, and put new parts on it, and it will still suffer structural problems. Not only that, but replacement parts get harder to come by when time does its thing long enough. Expensive, even. You can keep the old girl going, but it’s not going to drive the same. Time is merciless and does not discriminate.
When you’re younger, you tend to look at the big picture differently. You have a family to take care of, bills to pay, vacations to go on, kids to raise, and bills to pay. Yeah, I said “bills to pay” twice. I didn’t stutter. It feels like that’s all you have time to do. As I advance down this road to senility, (or shall we just say silliness?) I have started appreciating the smaller blessings along the way. I’m making a concerted effort to see the landscape filled with happy children, trees and flowers, and laughter as I putter down the road. The bug splatter on the windshield is still there, but I can look around it, if my wipers won’t get rid of it. It’s messy, and blurry, but I can still see things that make me smile. The small blessings that make life worthwhile.
Those worthwhile things are different for everyone. My wife and I have eight kids between us, and four grandchildren. Our mothers are still here. We have two dogs that depend on us to wait on them, hand and foot. All of these folks make life worth living. I may creak like an old see-saw when I get up from sitting too long, but I’ll crawl around on the floor to play with those grandkids. I may not be able to understand when they talk about the latest video game, or anime, or new technology, or music, but the conversation brightens my day. We watch our kids become responsible adults and can’t help but want to see what their future holds. Plus, we can still talk to our moms about anything, and everything. I love the ordinary pleasures. I love to finish a story, whether reading it or writing it. I love to watch my wife with the grandbaby. I love to look up at the stars on a clear night. I love knowing that, in the far-away future, my kids are going to be okay when this old jalopy finally breaks down for good. That’s an awesome feeling, knowing your kids are good people. It’s a pretty simple list of what makes life worthy of the trip.
My body may not be a 47 Packard, but it’s got a few miles left on the odometer. The hood ornament broke off years ago, the tires are bald (pun intended), the radio antenna’s broke, so you can only pick up the one AM station, and the interior smells like an old shoe that stepped in something. Even as I go bumbling down the two-lane country highway of ordinary living, even as parts fall off and are left in my wake like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs, you can rest easy in the knowledge that I’m going to pull down my hat, hang my arm out of the window, and enjoy the ride. I think you should too.
Rolling Stones 