A 92-year-old man, neatly dressed and taking great care of his appearance, was moving into an old people\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
His wife of 70 years had recently died and he saw himself needing to leave his home.<\/p>\n
After a wait of several hours at the reception desk, he smiled politely when he was told that his flat was ready.<\/p>\n
Resignedly and contentedly he walked slowly towards the lift, using, of course, his nice stick. I accompanied him, describing the flat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like it very much,\u201d he said, with the enthusiasm of a child about to receive a new toy.<\/p>\n
\u201cSir, you haven\u2019t seen it yet, wait a moment, we are almost there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat has nothing to do with it,\u201d he replied. \u201cHappiness I choose on a case-by-case basis. Whether I like the flat or not does not depend on the furniture or decoration, but on how I decide to see it, and I have already decided in my mind that I will like the flat! It is a decision I make every morning when I get up.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI can choose: I can spend the day in my room thinking about all my difficulties with the parts of my body that do not work, or I can get up and thank God for those parts that are still OK. Each day is a gift, and since I can open my eyes, I will slip into the new day with all the happy moments I have enjoyed throughout my life.\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was a young seminarian, I remember going to the infirmary one evening (I honestly don’t remember why). While the brother-nurse was tucking in two bedridden priests for the night, I stood in the dark corridor and witnessed the whole scene.<\/em><\/p>\n As he was tucking in the first priest, pulling the blankets under his chin, the elderly man angrily scolded him: \u201cGet your face out of mine, brother.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The poor brother went silently into the other room to the second priest. The priest replied gratefully: \u201cOh, brother, you are so good to us. Tonight, before I sleep, I will say a special prayer just for you.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n There, in the dark corridor, I was struck by a sudden realisation. One day I would be one of those two old priests. The full realisation was this: I was already practising for that moment. As one gets older, habits take over. Old eccentrics practise being eccentric all their lives.<\/em><\/p>\n Old saints practise their whole lives being saints.<\/em><\/p>\n Old age is like a bank account. We withdraw at the end what we have deposited in it throughout our lives<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A 92-year-old man, neatly dressed and taking great care of his appearance, was moving into…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":54255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[1745,2027,2021],"class_list":["post-54264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-good-night","tag-councils","tag-life","tag-virtue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54265,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54264\/revisions\/54265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.donbosco.press\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}