I'M GETTING OLD AND I LIKE IT

LUKY;
IT'S FUNNY HOW ATTRACTIVE THE THOUGHT OF OLD AGE HAS BECOME TO ME.
In the past when I'd hear Maurice Chevalier sing: "I'm glad I'm not young any more", I'd dismiss his claim as a case of sour grapes - but these days I'm not so sure.
  Now when I see a newly born baby, my heart aches for it, on account of the pains and pitfalls that lie awaiting it at every turn of life.
  When I see a new bride, I wonder if that bliss will stand the test of time.
  Will the brilliant university graduate justify the confidence his parents and lecturers have bestowed upon him?
  Will the teenager out for reform persevere in her lonely path upwards?

Older and wiser
  The lovely thing about not being so very young any more is that one no longer takes oneself seriously; neither do you accept others at face value.
  When you're young, people who think a lot of themselves automatically make you believe they're better than you are, and you yearn to make everyone think well of you.
  When you're older and wiser, you realize that it's not important what people think of you, but what God knows of you, and you learn to distinguish the worth of a man from his opinion of himself. When you see someone doing wrong, you pray for him rather than condemn him as you might have done twenty years ago.
 
Count your blessings
 When you get on in life you begin to count your blessings instead of bewailing your problems. You realize that he who accepts the trials God sends him is like a young and supple tree which bends its branches into the direction the wind blows, and thus survives most storms without being damaged.
  When you're older you smile at the people who earnestly discuss prayers and attempt to analyse them, because you have learnt that prayer is like housework. As the woman said: "When my friends ask me how I manage to keep my house so clean, all I tell them is: 'I start! I start!"

Just keep that sun shining
  When you're young you pray for money, dates, success, popularity. When you're older, you are so grateful for your good luck until now that you spend most of your prayertime giving thanks - like the old farmer in the Jim Reeves record,
  When you're older you begin to comprehend that prayer should take two forms, formal and informal, and that the two cannot exist without one another. And if you do feel you're allowed to make a wish, say at Easter or Christmas or on your birthday, you don't quite know what to ask for and end up saying:
  "Just let that sun keep shining and the sky stay such a lovely color, and don't let my kids lose their way, and if any of them do please save them, and let us stay alive until they don't need us any more. And if one of us dies, give the other the strength to carry on. And even if we both die You'll make a plan, I know - so why should I lay down the law to You?"
  And yet that's the time when you'll find that blessings will overwhelm you, and that even things you would hitherto have been hesitant to request are being poured down upon your grateful head like the unexpected shower of rain does just after you've had your hair done.