Hope I die before I get old. ~ The Who

Inspiration for my piece each week comes from random places at times. I’m actually writing this a week early, my aunt died this morning, my assistant’s mother-in-law died this afternoon. So aging and life are certainly on my mind and as I came home from the grocery store after the gym, cursing the darkness due to the time change, The Who came on the radio and I got to thinking about the quote I posted above.

Now certainly when The Who wrote that lyric they meant it quite literally. You see the world was in complete cultural revolution. The conservative, very white, very Christian pillars of society were being deeply questioned by young people both in America and in England. Shut up, do what your told, don’t question authority, not your parents, not your church, not your government just wasn’t working for people anymore. The Civil Rights Movement was in full swing, the Vietnam War was raging and making less and less sense every year. For the first time a large number of Americans started to not blindly trust the government. The hippy movement was starting and people were burning their draft cards and some fleeing to Canada to escape the draft.

Cultural upheaval has a tendency to be a great time for art and music. As the boxes people see themselves in begin to change, new ideas more easily find their way to the fore and boom, welcome to the heyday of rock’n roll and those immortal lyrics by The Who.

I’ve always loved that song, and loved that lyric and I’ve always taken it to mean something a bit less literal. You see every one of us has to age, trust me, I’m about to turn 60 and it will happen to you as well. But getting old quite frankly is optional. Old is all about your mentality, I know 20 year-olds who are old as hell. They’re set in their ways, their closed minded, they aren’t looking in any way to make changes or progress in their life. I know people of advanced age, in their 70’s and 80’s who are old, in the same way those 20 year-olds are and they have a tendency to be bitter and unhappy people.

What gives me hope, are all of the people of advanced age I know and have known who aren’t old. My granny’s friend Johanna, at 88 would flirt with me like a young woman, she absolutely had the spirit of a teenager. Currently I have a friend Marv, closing in on 90, plays golf every week, still drives and loves to talk, debate politics and new ideas with an open mind. I’ll never forget when I was attempting my thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail and I met Scrap one night. She was a thru-hiker in her mid-80’s, about 5’2″ with a thick Austrian accent and had an amazingly adventurous attitude. She was an absolute joy to talk with on the trail.

And honestly it’s all about attitude, and your attitude is one hundred percent within your control. Life is what happens to us, we all have tragedy, responsibility, times when things just don’t go right. But our attitude is how we decide to respond to what happens, what story we decide to build for ourselves around what’s happened. The simple fact is we build our own reality with that story, this is why you can encounter two people who have had to deal with very similar tragedies, but one is miserable and the other isn’t. You can build a better story in your life.

There is a bit of a chicken and egg issue here, does a better attitude lead to better story building, or does better story building lead to a better attitude? Here’s the advice for tonight, you control both, but it’s easier to work on building a better story, to help build a better attitude.

So my friends, create the mental space to think about the story you want to construct around what’s happening in your life. Are you stuck in a bad spot, or are you pausing as you prepare to take the next leap. Will you focus on your achy joints and the fact that you can’t sprint anymore, or will you focus on finding long distance walks to find adventure and happy times? It’s your life and your story and you are the sole author, write a story that keeps you young and happy and you’ll certainly die, before you get old. ~ Rev Kane