“Praises for our past triumphs are as feathers to a dead bird.”
~Paul Eldridge
Have you ever attended a party of people over 30? A few are fit. A few are rich. A few are ebullient and confident. A majority are full of hot-air stories of unproven and improvable glory years.
Fast forward to a party of people over 45, and now nine out of ten are full of bluster about the way they used to be. Their stories are so incredible, that even (or maybe especially) their wives’ – usually the male specie does this - eyes roll.
“I used to be a scratch golfer, says one. “I used to date the most beautiful girls on campus,” boasts another. “I used to be Barrack Obama’s buddy in his Chicago days,” blinks a third distortionist. “I ran a four-minute mile when I was 19,” claims another boaster with a potbelly gut.
The used-to-be crowd remember the good old days as remarkable, but that’s usually because they tend to forget or brush over uncomfortable failures and setbacks which lessen their achievements. If only the cameras had been rolling to record real history, maybe the braggarts would talk much less boastfully about their past.
“No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life,” Bertrand Russell mused, “as not to receive new information from age and experience.”
Stop trying to impress people with the old, unreal you that may occasionally make you feel good or impress those unfamiliar with your past. To ruminate about the used-to-be’s of life will surely paralyze you in the here and now. They never ever produce a a drop of honey.
The best of your life is in front of you, whether tomorrow or 50 years remain in store. If age and ability seem to be draining you of your life force, then learn to make lemonade from the lemons you have been given. The happiest people always do so.
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