Advice about life from a 67+ year old grandfather©

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Written by Stan G. Webb© for Living In This World© - Rules For Life©

67+

Thank you to all of my family and friends who are wishing me a Happy Birthday! (67th - 2011, July 26th)

To celebrate another year in my life list, I make the following recommendations, most importantly learn to laugh and learn to learn:

1. Agree to disagree. You don't have to win every argument.
2. Allow yourself little vices. 'When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.'
3. Trivia: Alternative Definitions: ADULT – A person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle. BEAUTY PARLOUR – A place where women curl up and dye. INFLATION – Cutting money in half without damaging the paper. COMMITTEE – A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours. DUST – Mud with the juice squeezed out. MOSQUITO - An insect that makes you like flies better. RAISIN – A grape with a sunburn. WRINKLES – Something other people have. I have character lines.
4. Bad or good, no matter how a situation is, it will change.
5. Be flexible.
6. Believe in miracles.
7. Breath deeply; it calms the mind.
8. Beauty, joy and usefulness are important; get rid of anything that doesn’t bring you these!
9. The best is yet to come.
10. The brain is the most important sex organ.
11. Trivia: When a horned toad gets angry, it squirts blood from its eyes. There are more than 2 credit cards for every person in the North America. The first of the five senses to go with age is smell. Geese often mate for life and can pine to death at the loss of their mate. There are more than 1,800 species of fleas.
12. Change is natural. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; never blink.
13. Children can see you cry! It's OK, in fact necessary, as they need to learn that life can also be sad.
14. Children get only one childhood. Make it memorable.
15. Childhood, however, can be relived within you. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. The second one is up to you and no one else.
16. Choose life over death – or worse yet, apathy.
17. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
18. Don't dwell on the past. Make peace with your it so it won't screw up the present.
19. Don't drink too much alcohol, or use anything that detracts from clear thinking!
20. Don't smoke!
21. Don't take yourself too seriously; no one else does.
22. Don't think about your problems too much. If we saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
23. Don't watch life pass you by. Show up and make the most of it, now.
24. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to share your 'child within'. It may be too late.
25. Envy and jealousy are a waste of time. You already have all you need.
26. Exercise regularly. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
27. Feel bad? No matter, get up, dress up and show up.
28. Food for thought: The nicest thing about the future is that it always starts tomorrow. Money will buy a fine dog, but only kindness will make him wag his tail. If you don’t have a sense of humour, you probably don’t have any sense at all. A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you are in deep water. Why is it that at class reunions you feel younger that everyone else looks? Scratch a dog and you’ll find a permanent job. I’ve reached the age where the happy hour is a nap. Be careful reading the fine print. There’s no way you’re going to like it.
29. Forgive everyone everything.
30. Frame every so-called problem with these words: "In five years, will this matter?"
31. Friends will take care of you when you are sick. Your job won't. Stay in touch with friends.
32. Go after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
33. Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.
34. Happiness (or not) is for you to choose. No one else is in charge of your happiness except you.
35. How to plant your garden: Plant three rows of peas: 1. Peace of mind; 2. Peace of heart; 3. Peace of soul; Plant four rows of squash: 1. Squash gossip; 2. Squash indifference; 3. Squash grumbling; 4. Squash selfishness; Plant four rows of lettuce:
    1. Lettuce be faithful; 2. Lettuce be kind; 3. Lettuce be patient; 4. Lettuce really love one another; No garden is without turnips: 1. Turnip for meetings; 2. Turnip for service; 3. Turnip to help one another; To conclude our garden we must have thyme: 1. Thyme for each other; 2. Thyme for family; 3. Thyme for friends.
36. If in doubt, just start out the door, leading with your left foot.
37. If it doesn't kill you, whatever it is really does make you stronger.
38. If you don't ask, you don't get.
39. In the end, all that truly matters is that you are loved.
40. Inner Strength. If you can start the day without coffee. If you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains. If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles. If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it. If you can take criticism and blame without resentment. If you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time. If you can ignore a friend’s limited education and never correct him. If you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend. If you can conquer tension without medical help. If you can sleep without the aid of drugs.
41. Trivia: Interesting body of facts: A full bladder is roughly the size of a baseball. Human hair can support 3 kg. Your thumb is the same length as your nose. A woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s. There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet. Women blink twice as much as men. The average person’s skin weighs twice as much as their brain. Your ears secrete more earwax when you are afraid than when you aren’t. If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it. The average woman is 5 inches shorter than the average man.
42. It's OK to get angry with yourself. You can take it.
43. Trivia: Let Me Think About This: When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane. Hard work pays of in the future. Laziness pays off now. What happens if you get scared to death, twice? Why do psychics have to ask you for your name? OK, so what’s the speed of dark? How much deeper would the ocean be without sponges?
44. Trivia for Lexophiles: A bicycle can’t stand alone; it is two tired. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. With her marriage she got a new name and a dress. The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully recovered. You are stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it. A calendar’s days are numbered. A boiled egg is hard to beat. When you’ve seen one shopping centre you’ve seen a mall. A grenade fell onto a kitchen floor in France resulting in Linoleum Blownapart.
45. Life is too short; don't waste time hating anyone or anything.
46. Life is too short for self-pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying.
47. Life isn't tied with a bow, however it is still a gift.
48. Love yourself because of who you are, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
49. Money borrowed is often money lost. Pay off your credit cards every month.
50. Money saved is money earned. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
51. Realize that life might not be fair, but it is the better of the other alternative (death).
52. Relationships that have to be keep a secret should not include you.
53. Reputations are important. What other people think of you should be part of your business.
54. Think about all of your emotions. Read the Psalms. They cover every human emotion.
55. Time heals all wounds, indeed, almost everything. Give time time.
56. Trivia: Time changes things (this came in from a 96 year old) 1976 Long hair…..2006 Longing for hair; 1976 Acid rock…..2006 Acid reflux; 1976 Seeds and stems…..2006 Roughage; 1976 Rolling Stones…..2006 Kidney stones; 1976 Disco…..2006 Costco; 1976 Going to a new hip joint…..2006 Getting a new hip joint; 1976 Passing the drivers test…..2006 Passing the vision test; 1976 Whatever…..2006 Depends
57. Trivia: Times change: How come it takes so little time for a child who is afraid of the dark to become a teenager who wants to stay out all night? There are not new sins; the old ones just get more publicity. The trouble with bucket seats is that not everybody has the same size bucket. Do you realize that in about 40 years, we’ll have thousands of OLD LADIES AND MEN running around with tattoos and RAP music will be the Golden Oldies!
58. Trivia: The first ready to eat breakfast cereal was Shredded Wheat in 1893. The clown fish can change sex. If a breeding female dies, the male fish will change its sex to female, and mate with another male. Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite. The average garden snail has a top speed of 0.048 km/h. We have heard the expression “to eat like a bird”, but in fact, many birds eat twice their weight a day. Strawberries contain more Vitamin C than oranges.
59. Trivia: One out of five pieces of the world’s garbage is generated in the U.S.A. Oliver Cromwell banned kissing on Sundays. St. John was the only one of the 12 apostles to die a natural death. A baby blue whale gains 4.5 kg. an hour. Jelly fish and Starfish have no central brain. Women smoke more than men do.
60. Trivia: Money isn’t made out of paper; it’s made out of cotton. The dot over the letter i is called a “tittle”. 115 entries in Webster’s 1996 US Dictionary were misspelled. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos. Most lipsticks contain fish scales. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
61. Trivia from Today's Stock Market Report: Helium was up, feathers were down. Paper was stationary. Knives were up sharply. Pencils lost a few points. Hiking equipment was trailing. Elevators rose, while escalators continued their slow decline. Mining equipment hit rock bottom. Coca Cola fizzled. Shipping lines stayed at an even keel. Balloon prices were inflated.
62. Use the good dishes, burn the candles, put out the best linen. Don't save them for a special occasion. Today is a special occasion.
63. Walk in your own shoes. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea about their journey.
64. Trivia: Why ask why? If money doesn’t grow on trees, why do banks have branches? Why to we say “slept like a baby”, when babies wake up ever hour and a half? Why do we yell “Heads Up” when we should be yelling “Heads Down”? Why is it called quicksand when it sucks you down very, very slowly? What colour hair do bald men put on their drivers license? How can something be both “new” and “improved”?
65. Work at it! You can get through anything if you stay with it hour-by-hour and day-by-day.
66. Work hard at whatever you do. Over prepare, then go with the flow. Writers write. If you want to be a writer, write.
67. Work really hard to be an autodidact. “Autodidacticism (also autodidactism) is self-education or self-directed learning. An autodidact is a mostly self-taught person, as opposed to learning in a school setting or from a full-time tutor or mentor. The word "Autodidacticism" finds its origin in "Didacticism", an artistic philosophy of education. A person may become an autodidact at nearly any point in his or her life. While some may have been educated in a conventional manner in a particular field, they may choose to educate themselves in other, often unrelated areas” ~ The Free Dictionary by Farlex 
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