Love and BBQ

Do you ever think about growing old?

What will it be like?

Are we there yet?

I mean seriously, how old is old? I’m 45 years old now and I’m sure at one phase of my life I would have thought that was ancient. But in reality, except for some daily aches and pains, I don’t feel any different than I did way back when.

I’m much more confident that I used to be and that’s not really because I’m any smarter than I was, I think it’s more because I have learned that life is not so serious and that I can make it – no matter what the circumstances are.

Have you ever been to a public place and observed couples together? Normally we associate love with young people frolicking around and making fools of themselves with public displays of affection. But how do you feel when you see two “old people” doing the same thing? Does it gross you out? Do you ever thing “they’re a little too old for that”?

I don’t relegate romance as the domain of the young. As a matter of fact, in my own life I have found that as I have gotten older I am much more of a “hopeless romantic” than I ever was in my youth. Maybe it’s because I am so much more aware of how important love and romance is in my life and I just can’t ever take it for granted.

Maybe in my youth I assumed that those things were our rights. But as I found out, it’s never our right to be in love or more importantly, to be loved.

It is the greatest honor of our lives to be in a relationship that defines who we are. It is the most precious thing and nothing should ever get in the way of that. Especially not the destructive things like pride and the great “man-thing” of having to be right.

Sure, none of us are as “attractive” as we once thought we were. We sag in places that we didn’t used to. But what we lack in physical things we more than make up for in spiritual things. Our love can be much deeper now that we have passed through the time where it was all about us and getting what we thought we deserved.

Love lasts as long as we draw breath. And in reality, our options grow as we reflect on a lifetime of wisdom. Feelings deepen as we realize that they are the most important thing in our lives.

Living with our love, no matter what our age, simply means that we have learned to keep our love more vital than things like our jobs. Because jobs come and go and priorities always change, but love, love is the constant thing that actually defines not only who we are, but who we want to become.

Aged love, like aged wine, becomes more satisfying, more refreshing, more valuable, more appreciated and certainly more intoxicating.

So as I observe the trials and tribulations of young love these days, I just smile with pity and forgiveness for their incomplete knowledge of how life actually works and I pray that they will be around to realize one day that love never grows old. It just gets better.

And that is my prayer for you – because I’m already there and loving every moment of it.