Life can be a festival of delights -- if I let it

George Carlin once said that he didn’t think he was getting old until one morning he woke up and found himself saying: “Dadburn it!” But, he’s older than I am, so that was probably why he was there. Gives a body something to look forward to.

But, seriously, in terms of aging, I do find myself looking at changes in my life and in my attitudes. Fortunately, many of the changes seem to be OK. The ‘good stuff’ (inject your own definition of ‘good stuff’, I already have one in mind, thank you) probably gives me more pleasure than it ever did, and the bad stuff (so far) seems to consist of glitches rather than catastrophes.

I’ve also developed some actual philosophical thoughts that help to guide me through the morass of the day-to-day, and that’s a good thing. What this has involved is chucking out the crap, and embracing the positives. Crap includes:

* eschewing a lot of my former materialistic impulses.

*Getting less enraged by the power-hungry, vulgar and greed-headed morons that dominate politics, entertainment, big business, bureaucracies, and so forth. Why should I care about the shenanigans of a pea-head like Paris Hilton? I know the media tells me I must, but I refuse.

*Accepting the fact that crappy music is the order of the day.

*Not having overwhelming urges to dash off letters-to-the-editor over every enraging item reported in a newspaper. I’d spend all day writing if that were the case, and would stand in jeopardy of being one of those old farts who fulminates against everything, and prefaces his thoughts with “In my day …”

*And finally, and this is my most trenchant impulse of all, and one that has come with my age: being bloody grateful for my life as it is, because it could be so much worse.

Such thoughts came to me this weekend when Wendy and I were both decrying the fact that she has to work many miles away and we only get to be with each other a few days every month. Here we are, two thrice-married middle-aged souls who finally ‘got it right’, and are crazy about each other’s company, even a decade after we met, and we only get brief times together.

But, what we realized was that negative feelings were dragging us down. We talked a lot about it and decided we should only be grateful that we only live a three-hour drive apart, she has a terrific job, we love each other very much, where she works is a very nice community, and the times we are together are terrific. We could, on the other hand, have a terrible marriage that was a mistake (again), a bad job, or no job at all, rotten health, or we could be apart for months while I served in Afghanistan, like some of the wives in our neighborhood have to face every day.

In that we realized that there is great power in positive thinking. No, I’m not going all Norman Vincent Peale about it, but just saying that attitude counts for a lot. “Attitude of gratitude,” as the saying goes, can carry us a long way.

Some of the inspiration for sharing these thoughts come from Heiresschild’s blog of this morning in which she lists the things for which she feels blessed.

Here are mine, in no particular order:

1) my life

2) my good health

3) a sound mind and intelligence (most of the time)

4) my own place to live (and a fine place it is)

5) Wendy

6) my talents, such as they are

7) my friends

8) my blogging friends (I value you more than I probably express)

9) my sense of humor

10) my personal history, both good and bad (I learned much from the bad)

11) my belief system

12) my education

13) having briefly been a stepfather

14) the fact a pretty smile can still turn my head in appreciation

15) That panty-girdles are no longer female undergarb (OK, we find our gratitude in many places.)