'To know the road ahead, ask the one who's coming back': Dargan Boy to mark 75 years

You know, I have been playing a trick on you for 20 years, and I suppose today I should confess.

Some have even suggested that confession is good for the soul; hope so.

Since 2003, I have been writing columns in this newspaper under a pretentious disguise that I am a boy from Dargan, and I suspect in my own little mind I have always been a young lad from those woods.

But the truth of the matter is simply this: I am growing old, and each year I search the quotes of others to see how they travelled this road of life.

There is an old Chinese proverb that suggests "To know the road ahead, ask the one who’s coming back." Learning how others have confronted that aspect of aging can often be enlightening.

Let’s take a peek at a few words of advice that I have been offered. Perhaps some of them might even assist you in your own travels up the hill.

"Just remember once you are over the hill you continue to pick up speed," said cartoonist Charles Schultz.

A Native American proverb offers this advice on living: "When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice."

I have always remembered this lofty spiritual advice. And sometimes when I find myself on an errant path, I am reminded.

And then there is that line from Jonathan Swift, who offered his own take on aging: "No wise man ever wishes to be younger."

Now this one provoked a lot of thought. When those aches and pains of this old body wake me each morning, I often remember all that energy and painless and priceless fun I used to have in my youth. I can tell you straight forwardly that I wouldn’t at all mind being 16 again.

But wait, that was an age and time where wisdom avoided my acquaintance. For sure this is a reminder from Mr. Swift. I’m not sure I would want to make all those same mistakes over again.

Wisdom is very often a good friend.

Betty White, the ageless actor who left us at age 99, reminded us of her optimism: "The older you get the better you get, unless you’re a banana."

And remember George Burns, that elder statesman who liked his cigars and died at the age of 100, with this reminder: "Nice to be here? At my age it’s nice to be anywhere."

When I came back from Vietnam in August 1968, I got married on the first day of winter (Dec. 21) that year. I told my wife at our wedding that I had a premonition that I was going to die young.

"You’re crazy," she said, "you’re healthy as an ox."

In 1972, I then knocked over a telephone pole at age 24 and almost died young. As I laid in a hospital bed for six weeks, one day she came to visit me and agreed "Maybe you are going to die young."

I was mistaken; next week I will turn 75 should I survive the next few days.

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Each birthday always causes one to examine life a little closer. So many friends, relatives and neighbors have already made their journey across the river (I'm remembering Ron Ingram and Wayne Ridenour here).

It seems too that each one of us is standing in line and possesses a number for our turn.

Marcus Aurelius, a philosopher king of Rome once offered his own take on living: "Live not one’s life as though one has 1,000 years, but live each day as the last."

I have attempted to keep this thought on the first line of my things to do list.

George Santayana was a pragmatist who also offered this reality that's also at the top of my priority list: "There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."

And going through some old cards of endearment my wife, Sheila, had saved over the years, I found one the other night I had given to her on Aug. 4, 2014.

It had a picture of a young Indian warrior and his favorite maiden on the front of the card. Inside was written the following verse:

"Look for me;

Our love will always be young.

Even when we are old and I am gone.

I will always be with you;

Look for me."

A fitting epitaph of love, I’m thinking, when birthdays are done.

May peace be with you.

Pete Waters is a Sharpsburg resident who writes for The Herald-Mail.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Columnist contemplates aging as he sees another birthday coming