OLD OR OLDER?
By Jim Hite

A couple of Sundays ago, we left the television on while getting ready for church, and I heard several of the topics to be featured on CBS' Sunday Morning. I stuck a tape in the VCR, pressed 'record,' and let it run. Didn't want to miss anything!

The one feature that struck me most was about George Burns. It was fascinating! Having grown up with the Burns and Allen radio show and later television episodes from their home on Wistful Vista (several of which I have in my videotape library), I thoroughly enjoyed the short review of his life and some of the interviews conducted in his later years. Burns never stopped in his performing career until he had to cancel an appearance in celebration of his 100th birthday. He died, I think the announcer said, 46 days later.

Whether or not you remember him, whether or not you were a fan, I hope that you can appreciate his outlook on life expressed throughout his later years, right up to the time of his death.

The screen showed him at one of his shows, giving his rendition of the song: "Young at Heart." And while he did not reach 105, he did have a "head start" as he was definitely among the young at heart.

However, during an interview, he said something that really hit home: "You have got to get older. You do not have to get old!"

I love that!

Let's think that through. In many ways, "getting old" is not connected to one's age. We know many who are already old, even those whose chronological age is not. They are the uninteresting and uninterested, fearful of what is different and unknown, giving off an aura of negativity, closed to new thoughts and ideas, satisfied with an existence shackled within the stifling cocoon of their very limited world.

Then there are those marvelously positive individuals who have never stopped expanding the horizons of their world, who have a lifelong quest for knowledge, who realize the world is a great and varied place. These are the vibrant and vital, whose aura is positive and supporting, who are always moving forward to make the world around them better for their having been in it.

We all know both kinds.

Which ones may be getting older but are not old? Which are already old?

And whatever your age, when you look in the mirror, are you getting old or just older?

Your answer is up to you and you alone.