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According to livestrong.com, a man or woman over the age of sixty should be able to do 8 to 10 push-ups to be considered healthy in the upper body and shoulders. Anything under 4 was considered to be seriously needing improvement. I hadn’t done any push-ups in years, but I do work out and consider myself in reasonable shape. So I decided to accept the challenge.

I got down on the floor, extended my legs out, and began. The first five were no problem. At about seven the bones in my arms were making a disturbing cracking noise. By nine and ten I was quivering like a jar of jelly. But I finished. I passed the test. Sometimes it can be helpful for us to take stock of our health by testing our capabilities.

I’d write more on this, but my shoulders are killing me.

I recently went to my local pharmacy to fill a prescription. As I peered behind the counter, I couldn’t help but notice multi-level shelves stretching as far back as I could see, all of them overflowing with bags of prescription pills waiting to be picked up. It was quite a sight. It brought home to me how dependent we are on pills these days.

We take pills for pain, for healing, for sleep, or to stay awake, to restore energy, to calm down, we even take pills to counteract the effect of other pills. We don’t know what’s in them. We don’t know where they came from. We have no clue what they are actually doing inside of our bodies. Heck, we don’t even know how to pronounce them.

But we believe in their magic.

Imagine that. Complete trust and faith in something we don’t understand.

The encyclopedia Britanica defines “middle aged” as the period in human life between the ages of 40 and 60. The book goes on to say that, during this period, a person’s thoughts gradually shift to memories and reminiscences of the past, instead of anticipation of the future.

I beg to differ. I am well into my seventies. I am still excited about what may lie in my future, and you should be too. Keep setting goals. Keep moving. Eat right. Get enough sleep. I can’t tell you how many people I know who have taken good care of their bodies, and who are still achieving into their eighties and even nineties. I play pickleball against an 85 year old man who whips my butt on a regular basis.

Sorry Britanica. It’s time to update your age labels.

According to scientific theory, it should actually be possible to go forward in time. The problem is, you’d have to be able to travel at or near the speed of light to do it. So far the fastest thing man has produced is a space capsule that can reach around 19,000 miles per hour. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second.

Still, if you could climb into a rocket, blast off, and orbit the earth at or near the speed of light, when you landed back on earth, you would actually be in earth’s future. Time would pass faster on earth than for you in the rocket. Crazy, but scientifically true.

The catch is, though you could go forward in time, you couldn’t go back. You’d be permanently stuck in future earth. It may a stretch, but I sense a philosophical lesson here. The past is past. You can’t go back. Don’t worry about what’s happened before. Time seems to pass by at the speed of light. Focus on the future, and make it a better one.

One of the main causes of depression is focusing on what you don’t have. You wish you had more money. You wish you were in better health. You wish you had more rewarding relationships. The social media platforms don’t help. Reading everybody else’s posts can make you feel as though you are the only person in the world who doesn’t have a perfect family, doesn’t go on lavish vacations, doesn’t have close friends.

Try shifting your focus to what you do have. And be thankful for some of the tragic things you don’t have. As the old song goes, “Count your blessings one-by-one.” Being grateful takes effort, especially if life isn’t going smoothly. But you’ll find that thinking optimistically gets easier with practice. You can make your own joy.

One of the reasons our lives go into decline is because we stop setting goals. What is your goal for this day? What do you want to get done today? What would you like to have achieved one year from now? Ten years from now?

Don’t just be satisfied to be alive. Accomplish something. Even just a little something. Tell yourself, I’m going to walk for 30 minutes today. I’m going to send a card/email to that person I love and am thinking about. I’m going to eat only healthy food today. By this time next year I’m going to have painted all the rooms in my house. I’m going to have lost thirty pounds and kept it off. I’m going to have written a book. I’m going to have read the bible cover to cover. I will have run a 5K race. I will have gotten involved in volunteer work. Set goals and then pursue them relentlessly.

It’s called having a purpose in life. It will keep your mind fit, and your body will follow suit.

You have probably noticed that not all injuries take the same time to heal. Injuries to your face, fingers, mouth, tongue and upper torso will usually heal faster. That’s because they have more blood flow. Injuries to your knees, feet, wrist and elbows will take more time. That’s because you tend to flex them so much the stress slows down recovery. It’s the reason arms are put in a sling, and legs in a cast. Muscles and tendons will heal faster than bones.

Emotional wounds may never heal. Especially if you let them linger. Has somebody hurt you? Let it go. Forgive them. Resentment is like an infection in your brain.

Fortunately, you don’t have to get a prescription from your doctor to make it better.

People of a certain age love to reminisce about the good ole days. Times when life seemed much simpler and safer. A time before the internet, before smart phones, before streaming TV, before radical politics, and before all of the unsettling influences all of those things bring to our current lives.

But were the good ole days really that good? The 1960s brought us race riots, the Vietnam War controversy, the Cuban missile crisis, and the assassination of an American president, his brother, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King. The 1970s suffered through Watergate, a stock market collapse, gas rationing, and the Iranian hostage crisis.

The reality is, the good ole days come when you make them so. Live right, treat people with love, do your best to make the world a better place. If you do such things, your best good ole days are yet to come.

My wife and I play this little game we call “Alive or Dead”. Every time we see or hear an old actor or singer or sports celebrity we immediately call out “alive or dead?” We then try to guess which is true, and look it up on the internet. We’re always a bit saddened if we find out the famous person is deceased, and always lifted up a bit if the star is still alive. We are frequently surprised to learn that the person is still with us, often in their late 80’s or 90’s.

On the other hand, some died young, right in the prime of their careers. It’s kind of funny how we pull for them to still be alive, even though we have no direct connection to them whatsoever. We feel a sense of loss even though we don’t know them. I guess it’s because their stardom left us some sort of legacy, something that made us smile and feel good and care about them.

I hope we all leave that sort of legacy to those who knew us.

During my lifetime I have had the opportunity to observe at close range many people who were successful in their careers at the highest level. Many achieved power, celebrity and wealth. Whether they were business executives, show business personalities or sports heroes, they all had one thing in common. Passion. They were unrelentingly driven to succeed.

They were all totally focused on their mission. Maybe to the point of obsession. Often to the detriment of any other aspect of life, including family. It was clear to me there is a price to be paid for fame and riches. They require complete control of your life. It takes all you have to achieve power, and then all you have left to maintain it.

I concluded that it doesn’t seem worth the effort. You miss too many blessings when you try to create them, instead of letting them come naturally from a higher power.