I was out for my morning bicycle ride when I found my photo-for-the-day: an old man I don't know but whom I recognize as being a member of my tribe.

JOINING THE COMPANY OF OLD MEN

Sometimes I have reason to say to someone, “I am an old man,” and what I often hear in response is a protestation, an insistence that I am not old. As a matter of fact, I am old; and as I look backward with satisfaction and forward with hope from the middle of my eighth decade, I find no reason to regret that I am no longer young. As I passed from one decade to the next, my hair grew grayer and thinner; wrinkles developed around my eyes; my prescription for eye-glasses became stronger and stronger; but I am one of the fortunate persons who have come in good health to old age. I am more than content. I am happy.

Cicero wrote in the First Century B.C., “Give me a young man in whom there is something of the old, and an old man with something of the young; guided so, a man may grow old in body, but never in mind.” Childhood was a good time for me, and I’m trusting that Aristophanes was right when he said, “Old men are children for a second time.” In this new year I will turn seventy-two. I am enjoying being a child for the second time. It’s not a bad thing.