The game of life.

In my youth, I always figured golf was a game for middle-aged old farts who couldn't dance around a tennis court any longer, or were too lame to go hiking.

So, what was I doing, golf club in hand, swinging at a little white ball hiding in the grass? I'm not middle aged. I'm not too old to chase a tennis ball and I'm not too lame to hike! Oops. Wrong! I haven't played tennis for 20 years since a serious case of tennis elbow followed by bursitis put my right elbow out of the game. I can still hike but I've given up climbing mountains. I don't need to stand on top of a peak to get my highs. Life does that for me every day!

Suddenly, walking sedately around a golf course has appeal!

Franklin Adams wrote, "Years ago we discovered the exact point, the dead center of middle age. It occurs when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush to the net."

Guess I must be middle aged.

Middle aged? How can that be? I dash to the mirror as fast as my varicose veins will support me. Who am I trying to kid? I have a head full of grey hair streaking through my black faster than a streaker at a football game evading the security guards.

Streaker you ask? Who remembers streakers? Mostly just us middle aged farts who remember a time when streakers were de rigeur at any large gathering of folk! Way back when in the seventies when our bodies were fit and lithe with nary a sag or wrinkle bearing down with gravities pull.

Actually, it's not the aging that's getting to me. It's the having to eat some of my words. They're choking me on the bile of blind youth's chatter about never growing old, about never giving up on my ideals, about never being like all them other old folks over there who have stagnated in the blissful youth of never giving up on being young! You know, the old lady with the spidered legs strutting around on stiletto's, wearing a mini-skirt only her teen age granddaughter should be sporting! Or the guy over there, the one with the comb-over. That twenty-something can't be his wife can she? Oh my. She is! Which means, the baby in the stroller is his son!

To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living. Henri Amiel

I'm into a life of continuous learning. Guess it's time to take up the art of aging gracefully and learn how to become a creator of master-works of wisdom that reflect my age.

Rather than balking at the prospect of aging, (it is inevitable!), I've decided to take it one step at a time, one day at a glance. It's time to stop running helter-skelter into the dawn of a new day, grasping at straws in the hopes that this one will bring me happiness. It's time to accept the happiness I feel being me, exactly the way I am, right where I'm at, grey hairs and all.

Golf great, Arnold Palmer, said, “The most rewarding things you do in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done.”

I always thought I would never play golf. I also believed growing old was a choice.

Time to let go of fear of change and accept the changes all around and within me.

Time to quit resisting the greener side of life. I'm not being put to pasture! I'm taking up the call to live it up with joie de vivre where ever I'm at, whatever my age. And in my wisdom, I know how to act my age with fun and laughter filling in the blanks of every page.

C.C. was right. Golf is for winners. And I'm a winner! Time to pick up the golf club and really learn how to play this game that some call, the game of life!

The question is: What are you resisting? Your age or the thought of giving up where you were at yesterday to step fearlessly into where you're at today?