Living Grows Old on Us More than We Grow Old

   The capacity for a long life might be compared with the ability to zestfully sing an old song, time after time after time.
   Terry Jack's "Seasons in the Sun"? It's been one of the songs I've always loved. But, I call it back up now and it seems too much same-o, same-o. A little feeling of I want to gag overcomes me.Too worn. Too used up. Same with a lot of other songs I've had passion for in the past.
   I listened to Bruce Springsteen this past day. He didn't do the best job with "This Land is Your Land." I believe he introduced it as the best song about America ever written. He said it was written as a reply to "God Bless America." I got thinking how Bruce probably has liked this song for a long time, and sang it so many times, it is wore out his ability to sing it with freshness. Even though he still likes it, when he sings it, it comes out sounding tried and burdened.
   Now, I love Bruce, but not his "This Land is Your Land" renditions.
   There's a lady I saw today over at the care center. She's supposedly dying. It got me thinking of death, and how often we eventually just choose to die. Living just grows old on us. Somewhere in there we lose the will.
  As it is with the song, so it is with life. If it tires you, you might just say, "Enough is enough," and let it go.
  So, here's where I end up with all my thinking tonight: You have to keep a freshness in your life. One way of doing that is to be able to take the same music and sing it as if singing it for the first time regardless how many times you've sung it. But, it is also okay to find freshness through new music. If you let go of the old, embrace the new. The important thing is that life not become old to you. How you go about keeping it fresh is not as important as whether you go about keeping it fresh.
   If you never tire of the same old music, maybe you'll live longer. But, if you never tire of enjoying new music, that will do, as well. The person who lives longest, is the person who enjoys singing the longest, so to speak. It is the person who enjoys a song --new or old -- and never ceases to find pleasure in song, so to speak. You've got to sing, if you want to live.