My wife wanted to buy a scale for the house a couple days ago. She said it would help us keep our weight in control. Now, my wife could use a few pounds on her and I am pretty much like most of my boomer friends carting around a few pounds beyond factory advisement.

I don’t think how much you weigh is the issue. Everyone has a certain amount they can carry and still look good. It’s what kind of shape you’re in that matters, my doctor friend told me. I fall short on both counts. But its coming spring now and I will get on the outdoor exercise now and trim up a bit.

I know high cholesteral and body fat are the stuff of insurance applications but I am convinced if you just don’t worry about stuff you will live long. I think if you’re overweight and not in shape and worry a lot you are in trouble. I don’t watch my cholesterol at all. I eat lots of fat stuff and don’t exercise enough but my cholesterol levels are way low. Just the same this spring I am going to walk 40 minutes every lunch hour and eat an apple – after four to six months I will be back in shape

But I think if I walk and exercise and still worry I am still in for a short ticket. It’s worrying that gets me. I do a lot less of it. But I am convinced if my faith level could rise significantly more in trusting God’s character and work in my life I could live to be 90.

Kirstie Alley was just fired as a celebrity endorser by a well-known weight-loss program for gaining some weight back. I worried about her to begin with. I don’t think you want to be the poster girl for weight loss until you’ve actually lost the weight. She has to be discouraged. She seems like a worrier to me.

I think baby boomers have tended to worry about the wrong stuff their whole life. I think mainly because we have had so many more options than our parents. Options sometimes come at a high cost. There is anxiety that comes with so many choices of shoes, schools, television sets and on and on and on….. It’s exhausting to have grown up in the proliferation of the consumer culture.

I have more books than I will read in 10 years. But I worry about the ones I don’t have or how I’ll find the one I need. I memorize my shelves sometimes just so I can remember what I want to read. And now I have an Amazon Kindle with dozens of newspapers and blogs that get dropped on me daily. And I read four major newspapers on the Internet every day. I am worried about what I don’t know.

I guess the one thing worth worrying about is doing what you should with what you have and know. Maybe worry is a bad word here too. Maybe "concern" is a better word.

I ordered three more books yesterday. I will read them. But not thoroughly. And I will mark them up and store them for later use. I was having my assistant type up my underlined portions of the books for quick use but I decided having huge files of portions of books was creating more worry than just finding where the book is.

I have all kinds of friends who are in their 70’s and 80’s who smoked like fiends that are looking like they will make it to a 100. And I have lost other friends who ate parsley as a snack and died in their 50’s. I think the test for baby boomer spirituality will be seen in the next few years.

I don’t see generations that have followed us boomers worrying nearly as much as we have. They just don’t seem to sweat things. They drive boomers crazy. They don’t necessarily break any more rules, in fact they usually break fewer rules. But they just seem to glide along. I like that. And that is why I like having younger friends too. Not underlings but peers. I met with one of my friends last night who is 16 years younger than me. We have known each other for twenty plus years. He is facing some mind breaking issues in his life. I would be done under by it. But he just says – It will work out, God’s with me. How can you argue with that.

And all this is why I don’t want a scale. It is just one more thing to worry about that will take months to do anything about. I can take a look in the mirror and say, “you know Doug you have a big stomach.” I don’t need to know how much it weighs. And I am trying to reduce the worry in my life, along with the stuff that I have to keep and manage, and collecting files of things I can find just as easily on the Internet when needed.

So - if you want to live long and well above all else don’t sweat things is my philosophy