As you grow older, how do you renew yourself and your relationships?

And I think I will keep you here,
deep within my heart.
Today...tomorrow...forever...and a day! (From Forever and a Day, by Cindy Heavican)

Songs can tell us a great deal about the feelings associated with time. Forever and a day! What a beautiful thought. When we marry someone, our thoughts are like in this song. Our hope is that our love and our happiness together will last long after our earthly bodies have withered away. Poems and stories are full of tales of love that have somehow transcended time. Some of these stories, like Romeo and Juliet, are now timeless themselves.

We would all like to think that our love will last forever and a day. We marvel at those people for whom this seems to hold true. We may know a special couple who never seem to tire of each other and who are always loving and caring towards each other. Perhaps our own father and mother who have been married for sixty some odd years and who still seem like newlyweds. Or friends who despite the longevity of their marriage treat each day as thought it was the first day of their marriage.

What distinguishes these unique relationships from so many others wherein apathy and even hatred sometimes replace love? The TV, newspapers and crime novels are full of stories where love turned to hatred and one spouse killed another. Can we blame time? Does familiarity breed contempt? Do we simply get tired of people like we get tired of the same old song repeatedly heard? I want to say no, let’s not blame time. If we must find something to blame, perhaps we must start with ourselves. Time can age all things and cause them to decay and rot. Time also allows all things to be renewed, repaired and restored.

What happens if we don’t renew ourselves and our relationships? Of course, they just get older and not better. They may rot from within. Think about yourself today. Are you renewing, repairing or restoring yourself? Or are you just getting older and decaying? We can make a choice. We cannot turn the clock back but we can move forward with it.