The poet Samuel Ullman wrote, “Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy checks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.”
It is vital to always look to the future, to have plans and aspirations-such an outlook is crucial to making the last years of one’s life rewarding and fulfilling. One woman with an impressive youthful attitude was the American painter known as “Grandma Moses.” She had produced around fifteen hundred paintings by her death at the age of one hundred and one. Yet she didn’t even start painting until she was seventy-five. She had never studied painting and was an ordinary farmer’s wife until then.
She had faced many difficulties in her life. Five of her ten children died young, and she lost her husband when she was sixty-five. She said that though she had experienced real pain and hardship, she refused to be dragged down by suffering and always looked ahead.
Whatever she encountered, Grandma Moses strove to make each day and each moment shine with her smile. After her surviving children left home and her husband died, she refused to give in to loneliness or step back from life. She took up the challenge of painting, and her last years glowed with a beautiful sunset. She wrote, “I look back on my life like a good day’s work. It was done and I feel satisfied with it. I has happy and contented. I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered. And life is what we make it; always has been, always will be.”
There is a great difference between simply living a long life and living a full and rewarding life. What’s really important is how much rich texture and color we can add to our lives during our stay here on Earth- however long that stay may be. Quality is the true value, not quantity. (Adapted from an essay by Daisaku Ikeda, SGI President)
You are invited to join us in a discussion about adding rich texture to our lives at the next introduction to Buddhism meeting at the Glenwood Recreation Center, 25422 Cedearbrook Drive (between Glenwood and Aliso Viejo Parkway) Aliso Viejo on Sunday, December 14 at 11 am (call 949-472-3810) and on Wednesday, December 10 at 7 pm at the Norman Murray Community and Senior Center, Veterans Way, Mission Viejo (call 714-444-9580) Visit our website at www.sgi.org.
