Keep on Keeping OnSample

Keep On Being Grateful

Gratitude is appealing at any age, but in our senior years, it may be our last best hope of being attractive.

But it takes humility. It’s OK not to know everything. Seniors who let young people explain things to them are attractive. It’s OK for us not to know who the hot bands are this hour. Let your grandchildren tell you how great they are as you nurse an inward, smug knowledge that whatever band they are talking about is nothing, worse than nothing, compared to Danny and the Juniors or The Crickets or Gladys Knight and the Pips, or, well, we could name them all night.

We know whichever band or solo artist they are talking about is not worthy to tie Elvis’ shoes. Whichever talentless and plastic contemporary “country” singer, so-called, that they gush about should not be mentioned in the same sentence with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. We know that. Indeed, God knows that. But we need not point it out to them. We need to listen, pretend interest, and be grateful for the conversation.

When your son, not even out of his forties—and what could he possibly know about sports at that tender age anyway—wants to tell you all about how great this week’s superstar is, try a little humility. Just listen while deep within, you know, and the angels agree that Larry Byrd, Willie Mays, Rocket Rod Laver, and Sugar Ray Robinson would defeat them, crush them, actually, whoever they are. All that may be true, but you don’t need to say it aloud. Let them talk about this week’s heroes and villains.

Humility listens. Humility is grateful they want to be with you and talk to you at all.

When you cannot make some piece of equipment work—some technological horror that you should not have to deal with and that promised to make your life easier and has not—humble yourself. Accept the help. Be grateful. Laugh at yourself. Then, when you are all alone, rant about stupid technology that has made our stupid world stupider, and that should not have been foisted off on you in the first place because it is stupid, stupid, stupid. Go on and vent. Rant! You will feel better after the steam is released. Just remember to do it when you’re alone. No one wants to hear it. Not even your spouse. Your spouse has asked God to let you know this, and I am His instrument.

When you eat Thanksgiving dinner at your daughter’s house, and she does not do it the way you always did it, which was, of course, the correct way, be grateful you are there at all. What? I can hear you object: She should be grateful for me. I raised her. Taught her to cook. I gave her life. She, not I, should be the grateful one, and this is not the dressing I taught her to make. She says it is not dressing at all. She has decided to make Kachchi Biryani instead of dressing. She got the recipe from a Bangladeshi cookbook a friend gave her. A friend? Not her mother? Not the recipe her mother gave her? Kachchi Biryani? It tastes like it. Do they celebrate Thanksgiving in Bangladesh? I don’t think so.

Of course, you are right.

On the other hand, would you rather be right or welcome at Thanksgiving?

Praise the turkey. Compliment the cook. Eat the Biryani with as much gusto as possible. Be outspoken, even over-the-top, in your approbation. Then, stop at Cracker Barrel on the way home. It will be filled with seniors avoiding each other’s eyes. They will know. You will all know. Eat some dressing and giblet gravy, and thank God you have money enough to pay for it and still buy an Anne Murray Christmas CD on the way out. When you get home, have hot chocolate and enjoy Anne Murray and be ever so happy you don’t have to listen to Taylor Swift.

We begin life crying when things are not as we want them to be.

That is not a good way to end life. Babies cry when they are wet or hungry or lonely and just want to be held. They cry a lot to express their unhappy condition. They sense intuitively that if they cry long enough, loudly enough, someone will come and fix it, whatever it is. They are so cute and cuddly, however, that no one holds it against them. Crying and wet and unhappy, a baby is still a cute little thing you just want to hold and hug and kiss on.

Old people? Not so much. We can die mean and angry and filled with self-pity, but if we die that way, we die old. Our best hope is to keep on giving and forgiving and being sweet and humble and grateful. Right to the end of this thing. We can keep on keeping on right up to the very moment when we die young…as old as possible.

Want to read more? Check out Mark Rutland’s book, “Keep On Keeping On,” available where books are sold.