I’ve always been the type of person who could push through anything.  As a kid, I won the most ferocious water fights because when the other kids backed away from the blasting hose, I took the spray right in the face and charged.

Not the most intelligent approach to life, perhaps, but it got things done.

Now, in my lofty and advanced years, I’m learning to try a less direct tactic.  Some have also phrased it as ‘He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day.’  While this may seem cowardly on the surface, I’ve recently come up against a situation or two that called for just this philosophy.  I will no longer:

• Attempt to move the grand piano (mind, the wheels are of no use in this situation) by sheer brute force.
• Decide that by pretending I don’t have a flu/cold, and by pushing myself as if the cold were not there, it will go away and there will be no cold.  (maybe the pile of tissues following me around should have been a clue?)
• Think that by planning my meetings closer together and announcing ahead of time that I’m leaving at a certain time, that I will thereby be able to make the respective and sundry individuals talk faster or stop talking sooner.

Perhaps it’s a sign of old age, and the mellowing effect of my years, but I’m going to call it wisdom.