With maturity comes the ability to adapt. This is one difference between an adult and an infant–and there are some pretty old infants out there. In other ways, however, because they haven’t formed opinions about a lot of things and lack the experience which can trick people into anticipating an outcome, kids can be far more adaptable than grown-ups. They can accept poverty, harsh living conditions, or sudden reverses in fortune, because for children, all things look equally inevitable. Children have softer bones and dispositions than older people, so they’re more apt to receive new impressions instead of repelling or opposing them. This is, like all our traits and gifts, both a blessing and a curse.
Old people can get set in their ways, become mentally as well as physically brittle. They can tell themselves that they know it all already, have seen it all before, and instead of struggling against the hardening of the arteries and the ossification of ideas, they can become as stubborn and willful as children who don’t know anything… often with the same harmful results.
When I (Jim Rohn) think about an old person who managed to adapt to life’s big and small changes, to stay ahead and keep in step, I think about that grand old vaudevillian and cigar-smoking joker and singer George Burns. George started out in show business before the days of talking pictures, touring the vaudeville stage circuit with his wife and comedy partner Gracie Allen. Together, they joked their way from the stage to the movies and to radio. Later, when television came along, “The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show” was one of the great ones, running every week for years and years.
Then one day, Gracie Allen died, leaving George Burns alone in the world with only his cigar, a trunk full of gag lines, a few million dollars in the bank, and a lot of great memories. Did Burns retire after his wife’s death? Did he crawl off and play golf until the grim reaper came for him? No. Burns wrote himself a new act, a new set of monologues, made a new career in the movies, and basically reinvented himself. He continued to crack jokes and pursue lucrative movie and television roles and personal appearances. He made a career out of being old! And he didn’t do that by being inflexible, you can bet!
* Source: Leading an Inspired Life by Jim Rohn