Maya Angelou was onto something profound when she said, “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” She might have been echoing Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous prayer — the one Alcoholics Anonymous adopted — which asks for serenity to accept what can’t be changed and courage to change what can. It takes both: the grit to push forward and the grace to make peace with what won’t budge.
Those of us stepping into the sunset years know this tension firsthand. The mind and body don’t always agree. My wife Lori and I follow our fitness instructors through workouts, and I catch myself thinking, I could do this easily fifteen years ago. But if I push too hard trying to recapture thirty-five-year-old muscles, my seventy-year-old body will demand payback in the morning. So I carry those words of Angelou and Niebuhr with me like a pocket compass — checking them often.
Every now and then, though, I meet someone who doesn’t just carry those words. They live them. And it gives me a shot of something I didn’t know I needed.
My son David Jr. and I had one of those moments not long ago, when he and his family were visiting. The two of us volunteered to make a food run for the whole crew — three families, more than twelve people counting the kids. We parked and were heading into the restaurant when we passed three older gentlemen settled into rocking chairs on the front porch. They paused their conversation to speak to us. One recognized David from his high school football days; another remembered me from the pulpit.
I nodded toward the eldest of the three — he had the look of a man who had outlasted a lot — and said, “You look like you’re doing pretty good.”
He didn’t hesitate. “You better believe it.” Then, with the timing of a man who had told this joke before and still enjoyed it: “I’m not doing bad — for a 90-year-old.”
“Wow,” I said, “you are doing good.”
He was already grinning, trading looks with his buddies. They reminded me of teenagers cutting up at a bus stop, and the ninety-year-old was clearly the ringleader.
He made me think of Satchel Paige, the legendary pitcher who played in the Negro Leagues before the doors of Major League Baseball finally opened to him — his career spanning five remarkable decades. Paige had a gift for wisdom wrapped in a one-liner: “Age is a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.”
It clearly didn’t matter to our man on the porch.
David and I grabbed our orders — each of us balancing two large carry-out boxes stacked to our chins — and navigated past the porch crew again. “David, looks like you’re feeding the whole congregation,” one of them called out. We laughed. We couldn’t help it.
“You all take care,” I hollered as we loaded the car. Then I turned to the ninety-year-old: “You keep it up.”
I’ll carry that image for a long time — that old man leaning forward in his rocking chair as if he might just stand up, peering across the parking lot with bright eyes, shouting back: “Don’t you worry. I will.”
And then, with what I can only describe as defiant joy, he pumped his fist in the air:
“Ya gotta keep going!”