Another Addition to the Boomer Wisdom List: Love Your Friends and Family

I just got back on the boat in Guam after those three weeks of family time in wintry Massachusetts. The guy on the left here, is my brother John, seven years younger than I am. He flew up from his home in the Florida Keys and together we helped care for our aging parents to give our sisters a too-short break.

We're good friends and share a lot of interests like boats and fishing and trying to live a healthy life style (notwithstanding that we are at the airport bar having a beer while we wait for our flights out of New England).

In fact, I'm pretty close to all my family--brother, sisters, son, and daughter--and it's hard to imagine getting old without them around. We do a lot of laughing and partying together and you can tell how much you've aged by watching your siblings and children get older. I guess it's all about sharing the experience of living with the people you love and have been with from the beginning.

So, here's the next item to go somewhere on the Boomer List of Small Wisdoms: If you can, get close to your family. Re-establish those bonds you probably had in childhood when you played and cried and had secrets together.

When I get together with my family, we laugh a lot about a lot of things, particularly the aging process and what is happening to our minds and bodies. Might as well laugh while we can, there's nothing we can do about it and there will enough crying later. And come to think of it, the difference between getting the most enjoyment out of aging is remembering one of the earlier items on this list: The difference between adventure and misery is often just attitude. We need to have the right attitude to get the most out of these declining years.