If there is no fool like an old fool, then as an older American I have a duty to avoid folly. Tolerable errors in the twenties are insufferable stupidities in the fifties. Everybody tries to avoid foolishness, but the older’s foolishness stings, because by now I should be grownup.
Growing old is easy, nobody avoids it, growing up is hard, and it is long past time for me to accomplish it.
I can stop wondering what I will be when I grow up.
Look! I am here. I am not going to be the next C.S. Lewis, I will not place kick for the Packers. I can let my fantasies go and enjoy the life God has given me.
This is not giving up. Adventures await even an old hobbit like Bilbo Baggins and new adventures await me I am sure, but meanwhile sufficient to the day are the evils thereof.
I can stop ignoring my own approaching death.
Death is closer than birth. No longer able to ignore it, I must prepare to die well. What heritage will I leave?
It is liberating and frightening to know the truth, to stop hiding from it: I am mortal man doomed to die. The judgment comes after death and then eternity.
I can stop pretending I have not made up my mind on certain issues.
The dialectic should continue to death and I will reconsider any position, but to be an adult means acting on your best bet on the truth. At fifty, having voted often, I might as well admit that I am a conservative.
Children are so idealistic they can never take a stand, because everytime they start to act they reconsider or find flaws in their position. Adults know no cause, however holy, is implemented by holy men. No holy cause is certain, but I must live and so I choose. Take a stand grownup.
I should stop talking more than I listen and ignore most “issues.”
My Dad told me once: “the older I get, the less I have to say.” I agree, though as a blogger and public speaker nobody may believe it. I like listening more and opining less. The odd thing about being an adult and taking a few stands is that an adult takes so few of them.
Most “controversies” are not worth a firm opinion or even a decision. I will not die over youur opinion regarding My Little Pony. I will not even lose a friendship over it, better just to listen, and watch it with you
I should accept the fact that I look “worse” every year by cultural standards and be happy.
I am who I am. I am not cool, was never cool, and now cannot be cool. The good news is that Hope, my friends, and my family do not mind how I look. They seem to like me. I shoulld never have listened to subjective cultural standards of “cool.” Instead, I should strive for beauty: inside out.
These are obvious truths, I have known them for years, but now I am starting to do them. Oh the joy that floods my heart when I stop being a chld, or better a fool, and begin to be all grownup for Paradise.
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