There is an old song called “Growing up is hard to do.” I think some times there should be another called “Getting older is hard to do.”

You would not think so at first as Gloria Pitzer said, “About the only thing that comes to us without effort is old age.” But I still think that growing older is tough.

First, you realize that you’re getting older is that your body starts to go south. When you jog, it feels as if you’re doing it in slow motion.

Some people believe there is a bright side to getting older. Madeleine L’Engle, a world-renowned author, said, “The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”

Kids are getting ready to go back to school. For some it will be the first day of a 12-year sprint on their way to collage.

As a senior citizen, I have decided to go back to work and in some ways it’s like going to my first day of school.

I know it beats the alternative – just sitting and watching my life go by one hour at a time.

The work place hasn’t changed much. The technology is newer and most of the people are all younger than me. But a job at my age is a wonderful thing to have.

George Burns puts it this way: “Age to me means nothing. I can’t get old; I’m working. I was old when I was 21 and out of work. As long as you’re working, you stay young. When I’m in front of an audience, all that love and vitality sweeps over me, and I forget my age.”

That is true today. Whenever I go to work, it’s as if the years melt away and I am again that kid just starting my first job.

I used to be a chronic complainer. It was my back, my knees or my lot in life. It was hell getting old. An old sage noted that the more you complain the longer God lets you live. Is that good or bad news?

I woke up one day and realized I had to do something. Rather then get a pill to calm me or a pill to ease the pain, I decided to go back to work. Working is the best medicine that I could find. Now, the older I get, the more it feels like it use to be – pain free and productive.

As I have gotten older, I also have found another truth. When I worked before, I always wondered what others thought of me and the job I was doing. I now realize that others are not thinking of me at all.

When I was 20, I worried about what others thought of me; at 40, I didn’t care about what others thought; at 67, I discovered they haven’t been thinking about me at all.

As Woody Allen put it: “You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.”

So my friends, get out and enjoy life, stay occupied and you will find that there is still a lot of youth inside all of us.