I missed yesterday! 

No I didn’t forget or get sloppy or anything like that.  I was simply gone most of the day and too ragged around the edges to think clearly or creatively upon our return.  And I was mentally processing the exciting event I attended on Saturday.

The gentleman standing behind me yesterday as we watched Jim find directions for us via his laptop; wireless broadband phone & MapQuest shook his beautiful white-haired head and made a comment equivalent to saying “I’m too old to learn the computer!”  I retorted, “We’re never too old to learn something new.  We just think we’re too old!”

I was peeved by his comment since I had just come from an exciting day at the Smaller Indiana BlogIn on Saturday.  Driving onto the campus of my Alma Mater (Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis or IUPUI) was like deja’vu!  I recalled when it was simply 3 buildings with two separate locations in the city and fighting to grow in size and integrity.  Now it’s a sprawling campus with housing and “School of_____” everywhere.  It was great fun coming ‘home’; sitting in a lecture hall and then moving to the classroom for separate seminar sessions.

I made a ‘resolution’ as I sat there!  Since I’m a life-long learner who gets turned on by acquiring new knowledge; I decided I needed to return to the classroom.  The very thought of it resulted in my dropping 25 - 30 years from a mental image of “age”.

We’ve heard the research, I’m sure.  All the experts tell us that to stay mentally alert as we grow more ‘chrono-mature’, we must keep the mind (”brain”) active.  What’s the phrase - “use it or lose it?”

It’s true!  If we don’t continue to exercise our mental capacities, we’ll lose mental agility.  We’ll soon find ourselves descending into a mish-mash of jumbled images & distorted memories from which recovery is seldom possible. 

But, if we decide (and it’s an act of the will) to remain mentally alert and image ourselves as youthful - then we will remain youthful. 

And I have a theory (totally untested by scientific method) that as we image ourselves youthful - so shall we be.  I think our bodies tend to toddle along after our brain and if our brain and use thereof, concludes that “youth is wasted on the young” - then perhaps our bodies will stay only a few years behind what the brain is racing out to do!  I don’t know that we can do much about gravity, but I do think we can aid all those anti-aging skin care systems for which we spend boo-coo bucks by applying some anti-aging strategies to our mental capacities as well!

I think it was Napoleon Hill who said, “As a man thinketh, so he shall be” or some such similar quote!

So I decided that I would audit a class or two (credits are not the object); sit in a classroom with folks half or more my junior and think that I am only a few more years ‘chrono-mature’ than they - and learn a buncha’ new stuff! 

Besides, just putting on the jeans with my sloppy fake “Birkies”; my new gold hoop earrings and a loose-fitting top (to hide the bulge about the middle) was like discovery of Ponce’ DeLeon’s fountain of youth!  Drinking in what Doug had to say was the intoxicating elixir of youth.

Let me just put it this way!  It was ‘addictive’.  With that said, we’re back to the saying - “What’s age got to do with anything?”

Not one thing!

Have an awesome day with much love & great blessings.

Linda