A reader asks Matt whether life becomes less and less worth living as a person grows older and experiences the effects of aging.
Matt responds:
As a general rule, my belief is that we live between our ears. The world exists in our minds. We can either accept it or reject it, like it or hate it.
We have all kinds of thoughts about what’s good and what’s bad for us. I happen to think happiness resides in a happy person because they make themselves happy.
There’s an old joke that when everybody is agitated and you are completely calm, maybe you don’t understand the situation. Maybe we don’t understand the situation about aging.
I thought about that when I hurt my back and had to make certain situations of what I could do and couldn’t do. My mind used to tell my body what to do, and now my body tells my mind what I have to do.
That took a lot of meditation and acceptance on my part: to live within the norms that I could live within. Finally I came to the conclusion, which I’ve always tried to come to, that this is a gift.
Now, what a stupid thing to say it’s a gift! But I think it is in terms of tolerance and hope and understanding other people’s problems, it has been a gift.
I now notice people when they’re out walking. Some of them are really infirm. It takes them a long time to walk. Some are in their motorized wheelchairs going down the path, getting the sun and the air. A couple of them are on crutches. But they’re still out there.
When are we redundant? When are we over? I hope my life is like the Looney Toons, where all of a sudden, the cartoon character says, “Dee dee dah, that’s all, folks!” and all of a sudden I’ll drop over and be in the other dimension.
I always try to look on the positive side. A lot of this has to do with my early life in the funeral business. I met families every day who had lost somebody. I was constantly reminded: Make the best of it; this is all we have; this is not a dress rehearsal.
Many times, friends of mine have come in to make funeral arrangements for themselves because they were going to drink themselves to death. One friend had a fiancee who had been killed. He couldn’t put a gun in his mouth, but he could drink himself to death.
One of my other friends lived next to a hospital, and people would come in and say they were getting off their kidney dialysis, and they would be dead in a short period of time. Some of them had told their families, and some of them hadn’t.
The human species is a uniquely different people. One person’s garbage is another person’s gold. One person’s disaster is another person’s education. How we look at things is paramount to how we live our lives and enjoy them.
That’s why I love my Little Orphan Annie song, which I sing to myself like a fool when the house is burning down and my car has been stolen: “The sun’ll come out tomorrow!”
I suppose one has to be really foolish to come to that point, but that’s the point I’m looking for. I seek it, I pray for it, I hug it, and if I feel it slipping away, I nail it down with hammers and nails. It’s my peace of mind, my most prized posession. It’s not for sale; it’s hard to find; it’s an acquired taste.
No matter how old you are, you’re not so old that you can’t learn. If it looks like the glass is 7/8 empty, go to the kitchen sink and fill it up again.
Matt