This New Year is a New Chapter

Excerpt from Daily Cures, Wisdom for Healthy Aging by Connie Mason Michaelis

What will your next chapter be?  Are you planning ahead for a great year?  I like to think of life as a book; each year is a chapter with a beginning, middle, and end.  You never know the full picture until the year ends.  Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, said, “I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.”  We can expect that our new chapter will be a good one because research confirms that the older we are, the happier and more content we become!  When a person arrives at 70, 80, 90 years of age, one might think the book is finished, but there is a good chance the best chapters are yet to come.  Erma Bombeck’s philosophy on reading was that if the book didn’t grab her attention in 30 pages, she’d start a new book.  If you happen to have had a difficult start to this year, change your course to make a fresh start, so this chapter ends better than it started!

Julia Childs didn’t make her first soufflé until she was in her 50s and then was on television for decades.  Colonel Sanders didn’t franchise his famous chicken until he was almost 70 years old.  Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of Little House on the Prairie, was 76 when her books finally hit the shelves.  Grandma Moses didn’t paint her first picture until she was in her 80s.  Betty White is a very active 98-year-old!  Recently someone started a rumor that Betty had died.  She said, “No, I didn’t die, I dyed!”   And remember George Burns at 100, he said he couldn’t die because he was booked!  We must always plan for more chapters; the best is yet to come, and we need to stay booked!

“You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.”  George Burns