Wednesday, October 3, 2007

The Reality Of Growing Older

I was the Table Topics Master at my Toastmasters club today. Considering that I recently celebrated a birthday, that my family will get together this weekend for my mom's 84th birday, and that my oldest daughter turns 21 this month, aging is on my mind. Thus, I chose as my theme "The Reality of Growing Older." I asked each speaker to comment on one of the following quotations:

"I was born in the wrong generation. When I was a young man, no one had any respect for youth. Now I am an old man and no one has any respect for age."--Bertrand Russell

"After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over."--Alfred Edward Perlman

"It is well documented that for every minute that you exercise, you add one minute to your life. This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $5,000 per month."--Unknown

"Thousands of geniuses live and die every year undiscovered--either by themselves or by others."--Mark Twain

"It is not good for all your wishes to be fulfilled. Through sickness you recognize the value of health, through evil the value of good, through hunger satisfaction, through exertion the value of rest."--Heraclitis

"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."--Jackie Robinson (whose words appear on his tombstone as his epitaph)

"You know you are getting older when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you can do as long as you are already down there."--George Burns

"Women over 50 don't have babies because they would put them down and forget where they left them."--Unknown

I concluded by sharing this quote: "So much is pressing in on humans today that no one has time to stand still long enough to evaluate it. They gulp life and taste nothing. They eat life and have no savor."--Geraldine Farrar (former opera star, on her 80th birthday)


Here are a few others on aging from my quote file:

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."--Henry Ford

"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generation."--George Bernard Shaw

"One thing that stirs me when I look back at my youthful days, the fact that so many people gave me something or were something to me without knowing it."--Albert Schweitzer

"Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the face, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-interest, fear, despair--these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust."--Watterson Lowe


The Word of the Day provided by our Grammarian was "scintillating." I commented that the word appears on my blog. When I asked how many people read blogs, only one hand went up. One person asked what a blog is. I doubt that he was the only one with that question. I mentioned this blog and sent out an e-mail letting people know where to find it. I am curious to see how many people actually look for it.

3 comments:

Myrhaf said...

Nice blog! Are you auditioning for "Enchanted April" in Rialto?

Quirky said...

I enjoy your blog also. Yes, I do plan to audition. I should work on an English accent for all the plays that seem to require one. Are you going to see Dracula at Rialto? I've heard that a couple of RSF people are in it.

Myrhaf said...

I don't know if I'll go see Dracula. I'm rehearsing Monna Vanna in LA and working on Richard III for the Haunted Grove, so I'm pretty busy this fall. Also writing and, oh yeah, I almost forgot -- the day job.