Awe, Awareness And Appreciation

I was thinking today of what we all should contemplate about now and then. We should all list on a piece of paper our achievements and fulfillments. We may look at others and see that they are perhaps a doctor, lawyer, accountant or social worker. We think to ourselves, wow, they have attained great stature in their professional lives. What have I accomplished?

You will be astonished if you list everything you have done for the last forty or even fifty years. You may have graduated college, married, bought a home, raised children, had grandchildren, and gone back at a senior age to get some more learning. This could possibly lead to a college degree at an advanced age or just helping the learning process to continue in your life.

Many people take up ballroom dancing or golf or tennis later in life when they can afford the charges necessary to pay for these adventures. I knew a lady Margaret Laufer who at age seventy-one went back to get a college degree and finally learned to drive a car. She had never tried either thing and when her husband died; she felt it was the now time. She even met a widowed man and they lived together to the disdain of her younger son. He felt embarrassed at this outcome of his old mom and told her so. They did it for financial reasons sharing the rent, the food, and the loneliness and for fun. Also, she would have lost a great deal of money in her Social Security payments. It did not matter to her son that he lived in Connecticut and she was lonely; he thought her an old lady to live with a man out of marriage. Of course, this was in 1971 and I met her when I at age 33 went back to get a college degree and Margaret was an old lady in our class. Everyone loved her and when she graduated, she gave a speech that told of her happiness to have received this degree and she out shone the president of the college when he got up and followed her speech with his eloquent words. The crowd was spellbound at this now seventy-five year old grandmother, speaking out on her desire for education and doing it at this grand old age.

My kids and I went to visit her once at her apartment and she served us tea and cookies in the old fashioned way of entertaining and my youngsters enjoyed her company for that one hour visit.

Make your list and call it your golden list because if you are a senior now, the golden years are upon us. If you are not yet a senior, call it your anything list. Make it and applaud yourself for your achievements thus far.

I can add to my list not only my writing, my ballroom dancing and competition trophies, my children, husband, being a good daughter to my mom and dad, my running a nice home, my travels to Europe three times, my gorgeous four grandchildren and being a model when I was sixteen and at age almost seventeen producing a fashion show at the old Hechts store on Broadway here in Baltimore (not the New York Broadway.) I got together the sponsor, Hechts, the models, the clothing from Hechts, the time, and the tickets and when I look back, I cannot imagine how a seventeen year did that. I was inspired to do it because I wanted to go to New York to become a fashion model and Dad said no way and in those days, we all listened to Mom and Dad. That was the final word.

So I decided to have a fashion show myself and since I was already modeling on Saturdays at Stewarts, I knew a bit how things were run. Hechts did not pay me but gave me the outfit I wore as a model in the show and I treasured it and still have it hidden in my cupboard at home these sixty two years later. Go and search your mind for things you may have forgotten about from your younger years and you will see that you probably will remember something so sweet and wonderful that you performed and were proficient about; you will be astonished it is you. An acquaintance of mine took on the raising of her nephew and niece when she married because they were orphaned. Finally, a few years later, she had her own blessed son and she raised the three with her husband as her own. Today, she is a grandmother via the two she raised and is awaiting the birth of her daughter’s first child. She did what it is called a mitzvah (good deed) though hers was far and above just an ordinary good deed. She let those orphaned kids live in a loving home, where she and her husband were their mom and dad, not aunt and uncle.

Whatever you have realized, actualized or attempted and you were successful, be proud of yourself regardless of your now age. Make your list and call it golden, twenty-four karat golden and know that you are a gold senior, not yet senior or young person who has been granted the power to achieve goodness, happiness and hopefully continued excellent health. You should be proud to hold your head high, pat yourself on the back and know that you are still special. You need not be a doctor or lawyer, you only need to be accomplished and happily continue to do so. 

An acquaintance of a friend of mine wrote these words “Here’s hoping more people choose to keep their eyes open and look and appreciate before choosing to speak dead words without awe, awareness and appreciation.” That is quite an idea. We can apply it to ourselves and others who we know. We have to learn to appreciate our finest qualities, our good memories and excellent thoughts about our own being.

Emily Dickinson said “We never know how high we are till we are called to rise

And then if we are true to plan our statures touch the skies.

We can all touch the skies in whatever field we want to be and it is never too late to start.