I have given a lot of thought to the way I want to age. My mother said she was going to live to be 100 so she actually grew up all the time, so I just thought that’s what I did. So I always intend to live to be 100. I’ll be in a few years and it feels like I’ll be able to go back on the odometer and do the whole journey again, so I definitely don’t feel old yet, but I’m officially old someday. I do not want to be horrified by this idea, but I want to grow to grace. I know of some old women who are tall, beautiful, graceful, and comfortable with their age. They are smart, wonderful, kind and funny. Wise and learned, he also likes to tell stories. They wear their crowns of white hair royally, and I admire them very much. I want this to be the kind of old woman, and I don’t think it’s going to happen. Yes, I will have to work for it every day, to decide my life, decision, decision, choice.
I’ve always been fascinated by Scarlett of “Gone with the Wind”. He wants Clam to grow up exactly like a kind mother, a self-sacrificing, loving mother. Scarlett reflects on herself in a strange way, wanting to do something that will benefit her own good at the expense of anyone she meets. But every time he chooses badly, he reassures himself that sometimes, when it is more convenient, he will be kind, he will foresee others before himself, he will sacrifice for the common good. She chalks up every good choice to a tomorrow that never comes at all, never realizing that with every bad choice she’s going in the opposite direction she wants to end up.
She made a huge impression on me growing up. I came to realize that each and every choice I made was a closed building on the person I would become. The concepts of kindness and self-denial are not to be discussed, but to develop by practicing them from time to time, when it is least convenient and most difficult. But if in my whole life I am accustomed to be gratified, I trust that I will sometimes be so admired by a woman.
“A gracious woman obtains honor. Let the person of the heart be hidden, with the incorruption of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious before God. The future opens its mouth in wisdom and the teaching of mercy in its tongue Proverbs 11:16, 1 Peter 3:4, Prov.
