Dialogue: 60 reasons to be cheerful

By GARTH GEORGE

As the hours tick away towards zero in the countdown to my 60th birthday, it seems only yesterday that I waved my bat in the air to celebrate my 50.

And while I know I should be grateful for this richness of years, I am beginning to understand why from time immemorial, men have striven to find the elixir of life, the fount of eternal youth.

I know I have many priceless blessings to count, not the least of which is the mere fact of still being alive, somehow they seem often to get lost in a reluctance to accept that with advancing age come limitations.

In short, I'm thoroughly ambivalent about entering my 60s. This, of course, is all in the mind, for the fact is I wouldn't be dead for quids and even if I were able to have my life all over again, only two things would I change: I would never start smoking and I would look after my own teeth.

But the mind is where it's all at. And as the Bible quite rightly says: "As a man thinketh, so is he." We are what we think.

So in those times of disgruntlement at the depredations of age, I start to count my blessings.

The greatest of these, as I've said, is to still be alive. I certainly don't deserve to be. There were many times in my years of drunken hell-raising that I put myself in positions of the gravest danger, both from man and machine, yet I live while many of my peers who followed a more conventional path do not.

For some reason known only to himself, the good Lord has kept me alive. I long ago stopped asking myself why because there is no answer to such a question this side of heaven, and to ponder it is to risk a descent into self-deceit and even delusions of grandeur.

The next greatest blessing is to know God, to believe in him and to trust him, to be aware every day that he is the creator and sustainer of the universe, that he is I AM and thus ever-present, and that he is the same yesterday, today and forever and, therefore, provides a reference point of security and stability in an increasingly unstable world.

The third great blessing is to have a wife - lover, friend, companion, partner, supporter - with whom I have shared better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health these past 23 years, and with whom I look forward to sharing all that life still has to bring until death us do part.

The fourth great blessing is friends, of whom I have only a handful but without whom life would be dreary indeed. And among these I count good neighbours, of whom I've had a few, but not often. Good neighbourliness, like friendship, is beyond definition of worth.

The fifth great blessing is good health, and that I have, give or take a few long-term complaints that are kept well under control and cause no great inconvenience.

And to these I can add a good job among congenial colleagues that I still enjoy after 40-odd years, a lovely home, unpretentious but comfortable and convenient, plenty of good food, a sufficiency of clothing, and a couple of reliable cars to get about in.

Then there is a plethora of books to read, churches in which to worship, television to watch, the Internet to explore, entertainment aplenty and holidays to enjoy as long as they are taken anywhere but Auckland.

So, as you see, I have much to be grateful for. But sometimes even contemplation of that is not enough.

There are times when I feel as if I'm half a step behind the rest of the world, that I'm not quite keeping up, and the anxiety begins to gnaw that perhaps I'll fall further and further behind.

Then there tends to sneak in a yearning for a return to what I perceive - though perhaps through rose-tinted glasses - as the simpler, quieter, gentler, more relaxed society of my past and the days when energy, vitality and virility were inexhaustible.

At these times, I am in double jeopardy, for such thoughts can quickly turn to resentment - the most dangerous and destructive of all emotions - and resentment to guilt as I belabour myself for being such an ungrateful bastard.

"A grey head," said the writer of Proverbs, "is a crown of wisdom." I've been grey since my 40s. The wisdom, I fear, is yet to come.
* garthgeorge@herald.co.nz