LEXICOLOGY

The words we use to describe something often reflect our mood. What about turning that around and choosing our woods to create our outlook?

The well-noted question of the glass is half empty vs. the glass is half full led me to start looking around for words we use related to getting older or being older.

Some talk about older is wiser while others ask: "Are we getting better or just older?"

At 60 when every look in the mirror showed me a new wrinkle, I instructed myself to retort: "Aren't you glad you can still see them?" (Now that I can't so well, my plan is to stop looking.)

Famous people have left their words. "As I get older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do" comes from Andrew Carnegie.

Plato has been quoted as saying: "The spiritual eyesight improves as the physical eyesight declines."

Edith Wharton wrote: "In spite of illness, in spite of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in a small way."

And it must have been one of our grandmothers who first said: "At twenty we worry about what others think of us. At forty we don't care what others think of us. At sixty we discover they haven't been thinking about us at all."

My favorite words to describe aging seem to be Yiddish. Cockamamie, shmendrick, meshugenah--no matter what they actually mean, never fail to make me smile.

So if you're no longer a boychik or a girlchik, hopefully you've grown up not to be a shmendrick or a shnoock and feel free to kibitz and kvell over your meshugenah friends and nudnik mishpecha.

Try not to wear your shmatas out to dinner and keep that shlock for sitting at home. Get a cup of tea and schmooze on the phone about your own shtick and all the tsurris that is no doubt on its way.

If you need some translation help, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Yiddish_origin