daily java

Daily Java:

Seventy years are given to us!
      Some even live to eighty.
   But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble;
      soon they disappear, and we fly away. (Psalm 90:10)

Last week I turned 62. It is truly hard to believe that I am this age. I am no longer the young man I have felt myself to be the vast majority of my life.

According to this scripture, I have no more than eight years left to me, maybe eighteen, depending on whether or not I am allowed it.

It is a fact that people are living longer nowadays. Good nutrition, availability to doctors and medical attention, all that stuff has caused us to live longer. And there are those who think that they are just a step or two away from a longevity drug that will cause us to live even longer.

But do we really want to? As hard as the last five years has been on Ella and me, would I really want to live a long time like that.

There is also the problem of finances. If people live longer, what will they use for money? Social Security will run out, pensions only are able to go so long, unless you have a phenomenal stock portfolio, you will run out of money. Then you are a very old person with nothing.

And if people live to be over 100, who is going to hire a 100 year old to work? Not to mention the fact that there are young people who need the work too to start their lives and families.

It really is a selfish thing to want to live too long. But why do people want to?

What is it about life that causes them to try desperately to hold on to it and to their youth?

One of the big things I hear nowadays is that 40 is the new 30. People forty today are in the shape people who were thirty were in fifty years ago.

I will admit that as I get older, older women look better to me. younger women are beautiful, yes. But older women have something to say. Sooner or later you have to get out of bed and talk. It would be hard for me to carry on any kind of life conversation with a woman who is the age of the Victoria Secret models. Older women are more appealing there.

But it is also true that an older woman cannot hold a candle to a young woman in terms of absolute physical beauty. Not only that, she turns into a fool trying to do so.

Plastic surgery, dating younger men, large helpings of denial – all look stupid on an older woman.

Looking at some of the movie stars and their botched plastic surgery facial jobs, it is hard not to feel sorry for them. When you have nothing but your body, you are desperate to keep it.

The older actresses who make a place for themselves as older actresses are to be admired. They recognize that there is life after beauty, that youth is not all there is.

I have heard it ventured that the reason Marilyn Monroe killed herself was because she was about to turn 40 and could not imagine herself as an older woman. She was a star in many ways based on her looks. When those were gone, what was left?

And the funny thing is she is almost idolized today because she died at a point in time before the ravages of age hit her. would she have done well older? I don’t know. And we will never know.

We accept what we have and we grow older. The key is to grow to our 70 or 80 with dignity and grace. There is nothing more beautiful than a godly older person. And there is nothing more pathetic than an old person who is trying desperately to keep his or her youth.