Celebrating the Days of Our Lives

This rant was posted a couple of years ago.  For one reason or another I have chosen to post it again.  The real crux of the matter, apart from my own aversion to the proclivity to use unnecessary euphemisms, is that each day is a gift.  Today truly is our best day.  Make something of it.

Seasoned citizen, keenager, golden ager, matured, senior. No. I am old. I may be your elder. There is truly no need to find a euphemistic expression to describe my progress through this adventure we call life. I may call myself a coot, but it is not necessary, nor even desirable, that you refer to me in that fashion. I would never refer to an older lady as a biddy. But I might call her old.

The Wesleyan Church has a ministry for people past fifty which they call "Best Years Fellowship." It is an achievement to have arrived at "these years" but if they are the best years, then what of the fifty or more years we frittered away getting here? Every year is your best year. It is the one you have now. The Baptists defer the membership in their fellowship of old persons to age fifty-five, but they designate them "Keenagers." Oh, yes. That is keen.

While we in the Western World tend to worship youth, seeking to hold on to it long after its time in our lives, the peoples of the East seem to have a rather different outlook. They actually go so far as to venerate and honor the old. Imagine that.

Spare me the pussy-footing around it. Call me vanilla, call me David, call me old if you must. But I am not a senior. I was. Twice. In high school when I was seventeen and in college a few years later. I may be keen, but perhaps not so sharp as I once was. What is golden about my age? Silver, yes. I can see that. In the mirror. The truth about this stage of our lives is perhaps best expressed in the final chapter of Ecclesiastes:

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;
While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain:
In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened,
And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low;
Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:
Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.