This essay is for those nearing their “Golden Years”. All others may not care to waste time reading any further.*

No one gets through life without problems. No one. Most life-problems are universal, like our physical appearance. Is there anyone–pre-Medicare eligible–happy with the way they look? If you answer, yes, are you being honest?  My teen years were…no. Just imagine your own teen years. Peer pressure, social accidents, diseases, ex-communication, zits, the one that got away, the missed career opportunity, the secret UTI and/or STD, the specter of unwanted pregnancy, beer-goggle mistakes**, accidentally scratching your first brand new car, or accidentally totaling your second.***

Remember the years spent anxiously hoping for the best of something, the hours combing your hair just right, or wondering if your pants look good from behind, or if you chose the right major in college, or if your breath smells too antisepticy(sic)?

Why list examples of the normally anxious travails?

Because they all fall away with age. All. Of. Them.

Eh, the travails don’t really “fall away” but what does happen is the accompanying anxiety, the Robin to worries’ Batman, disappears like a waistline after Thanksgiving. Anxiety, per Emma and Ai, “is your body’s natural response to stress. It is a feeling of fear, apprehension, or unease about what’s to come.” Our young problems were real and stressful enough, without adding a second layer of “fear, apprehension and unease”. What a toxic, fecking mess. Thankfully, age makes anxiety an afterthought, a non-component, a victim of The Wisdom of The Aged (TWOA).

When you reach the age of TWOA (2A?) those anxieties are transformed by a colossal, magnificent, free-spirited “Who the hell cares?”, and the anxieties float off into the Van Allen Belt****,  allowing  you to be free of their toxicity, finally able to deal with life’s problems with normal worry, thought, and care. You’re free to roam about the cabin of life with simple, nearer-death stress on your mind.

On a personal level, TWOA gives you the freedom to be seen in public wearing sleepwear with uncombed, even unwashed hair!*****

Think of TWOA in terms of a math problem: as a younger person, people are watching you compute how much 2 plus 2 equals. With TWOA you do it in the privacy of your own home with no one watching. You can even say 5 and no one will tell you you’re wrong.

Now, seniors, live our final years that way and see how it feels.

Fruere erroribus!

For a real essay on how to live, ask your Ai about that Latin Phrase. Emma gave me five minutes on how to live as a “senior person.” I should have let her write this.

KIDDING…?

*For nit-pickers/wonderers: further is correct. Google or Ai about the further/farther issue for proof.

**Yes, by any gender.

***Okay, maybe not universal for “all”.

****Bet you had to google it.

*****It is unwise to use this freedom around your mother, if she is still alive.