[manaboutown]

In the mid 1960s when I was young and just out of college I took a government job in D.C. where I kept running into an older man who had come back to work for the government after his business of many years failed. He was always cheerful, and not artificially so. He said hello with a big smile on his face every time I ran into him. After some time I asked him why he was inevitably so cheerful. What he told me was that when he was young he noticed there were two kinds of older folks, grouches and cheerful ones, and that he had decided to age into a cheerful one. IMHO he was correct. Over the years I have noticed my friends and acquaintances however they were tilted, from grouchy to happy, seem to have migrated further along the direction they initially took. Not many are in the middle.

My colleague was following the admonishment of Abraham Lincoln. “Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”

I have always tried to look at the bright side of things, no matter what I or my loved ones were facing, without ignoring the dark side. Through the bleak years from 2008 to 2016 it was barely possible to hang on to a positive outlook but since then I have felt as grateful and happy as I have ever felt in my life.

Our attitudes can change our brain chemistry and our body's state of health. Stress kills. Oncologists try to keep cancer patients as positive as possible. Of course if one does not eat well, exercise and so on over time one's state of health will inevitably pay the price.

All that being said an aging body and mind over time may require nutritional supplementation and possibly medication to function well, all under a doctor's supervision, of course.