Advice For Seniors - Grow Older, Not Up!

Sometimes you just get lucky.  Recently, I was  asked to speak to a group of senior citizens who were participating in an event called the State Master Games - it’s kind of a senior Olympics. It gave me a chance to share some of my thoughts with them about aging.  

These are some excerpts from my talk.  Some are humorous, some are insightful, and hopefully all of them will be entertaining. Here we go: 

…What people our age are good at is going to the doctor and describing it to everybody else. If talking about doctor visits was an Olympic sport, everybody in here would be a gold medalist. 

…I know I’m officially old now because I’ve started paying attention to commercials that I used to make fun of.  Like that Life Alert advertisement where the lady says,” I’m falling and I can’t get up.” I bet you I wrote 100 jokes for Jay Leno about that -  but now, when I see that ad I go,”Heyyyyyy! Think I could use one of those.” 

…I keep trying, though.  I still go to the gym - but my reasons have changed. Years ago I worked out  to get ripped muscles.  Now I work out so I can open a pickle jar without any assistance. 

…And if someone asked me for one surefire sign you’re getting old, I’ve got the answer: I wake up sore.  I went to sleep for seven hours, and it was too much for me. I guess I slept on it wrong.

…But, in a way, getting older is a gift. Sure, things don’t work as well as they used to - but we have more stories and wisdom that somebody half our age doesn’t have. Plus, we can say anything we want and  people will just shake their head and say, “bless your heart.” 

…I’m really excited about speaking to you this afternoon because everyone in this room is living. I know what you’re thinking. Well, no duh! Hear me out.  Everybody in this room knows somebody our age who’s alive, but not living. And there’s a big difference in the two.

A year before I retired I was meeting with our financial planner and when we got through, he closed his book and said, “So, what are you gonna do? 

“Play golf”,  I said. 

“Not every day,”  he answered. 

“I’ll do church work.”

“Not every day. Joe, you’d better have a reason to get up every morning. I’ve seen good retirements and I’ve seen bad ones,  and the ones that are most successful are when someone has a reason to get up every morning.”

…Clint Eastwood said  it another way.  Clint is 95 years old and he’s still making movies. When  someone asked him why he was still working, he came up with the best answer I’ve ever heard.

“Every day when I wake up, I don’t let the old man in. My secret’s been the same since 1959, staying busy. I never let the old man into the house. You have to stay alive, active, happy, strong, and capable. It’s in us. It’s in our intelligence, attitude, and mentality - we are young, regardless of our age. We must learn to fight to not let the old man in.”

…And just by coming here to compete in this event tells me that everyone in this room fights every day, to not let the old man or the old lady in.

Here’s a great example. I was standing in my senior yoga class waiting to stretch and grunt, and I struck up a conversation with a little old lady next to me. Her name was Charlotte. We began to talk and then she asked me an unusual question.  “Joe, who was president of the United States when you were born?”  I thought a minute and said,” Uh, I don’t know Eisenhower or Truman.” Then I turned the table and asked her who was president when she was born.  She didn’t hesitate. “ Herbert Hoover.” I was so blown away, I just said,”when we’d you born?”

“1931,” she said proudly. 

I did a quick calculation and said, “You’re…you’re 94?”

“Yep”

 I shook my head and said , “You’re my new hero!”

She replied, “I just do what I have to do.”

Friends, Charlotte is not letting the old lady in.

…Let me put this to you another way. In terms of football, all of us are in the fourth quarter. Some of us are early in the quarter and some of us are closer to the two minute warning, but make no mistake, we are in the fourth quarter. When I went to Alabama in the early 70s at the end of the third-quarter, every player and coach held up four fingers,  and the crowd chanted,”the fourth quarter’s ours.” That’s because the fourth quarter is the most important part of the game. The outcome almost always depends on what happens in the fourth quarter. So I begin thinking,  maybe it’s time to  extend that beyond football. 

Maybe everyone our age should start holding up four fingers at the start of each day (if your arthritis allows it) to remind us that we need to dominate the fourth quarter of our lives. 

It’s time to reach out to people in your life that were important, but drifted away.  James Dobson of Focus on the Family said that at the end of your life only three things are important: who you loved, who loved you, and what you did for the Lord.  

It’s time to say what has been unsaid to someone who is important to you. It’s time to give yourself to others. It’s time to forgive someone you haven’t forgiven and  to make amends to someone you’ve hurt. I encourage you to do start tomorrow because unlike a football game, we don’t know how much time is left on the clock. 

One final thing. I loved Jimmy Buffett and one of my favorite songs of his is called, “Growing Older But Not Up.” I know the chorus by heart and I’d like to read it to you now because it’s the theme of my life. 

“I’m growing older, but my metabolic rate is pleasantly stuck. Let the winds of time blow over my head. I’d rather die while I’m living live while I’m dead.”

That’s great advice for everyone in this room. Grow older, but not up. Win the 4th quarter. I thank you for being here. I hope you all have fun.