This growing old stuff is not for the faint of heart. I’m now 62, and I sometimes feel like the world is moving way too fast and I can’t keep up. Technology be darned!

Happily, I grew up as a flower child in the Vietnam era. My coming of age was a time of pervasive peace and love on the home front, and I felt, blissfully, in just the right place and time.

I was a young teenager who never believed in subterfuge or violence, so protesting that war was something I could take up with a passion.

Where did those days go when I felt such energy burning within me? I don’t know!

Now when the times are so appropriate, I avoid taking action, though I did take part in the recent Woman’s March in New Orleans. I just don’t want to upset myself, and I consider that a decision born of the wisdom of my age.

Yes, a time comes when you pull back and protect yourself, when you realize that happiness is what life is all about, so you try to only allow yourself to think happy thoughts.

I wish I had thought of this earlier. I could have saved myself a great deal of stress. But when I was young, and happily vital, I’m afraid I bought in to the old ways that told me life was about working hard, producing, making money, and worry.

So now, as I decline, I have found one of the great truths that the sages have long proclaimed. When I find myself in the bathroom and don’t have a clue about why I’ve come, I no longer immediately worry about having dementia. I can relax. When I try to articulate something and the words come out strained, slurred and robotic, I can take a deep breath and know that I’m okay. And when I freak out that I can’t find my phone while talking on my phone, as happened this week, I can ultimately return to a calm state of mind. The person I was talking with laughed rudely at my quandary.

I do trust that God, or the universe, has my back, loves me and wants me to succeed. That makes perfect sense to me. We are all one energy, and energy cannot be created or destroyed. That energy must want all the best possible outcomes, so it must want positivity. And that works quite nicely for my old self.

Marcelle Hanemann is a reporter for The Daily News. You can email her at marcelle.hanemann@bogalusadailynews.com or call her at 985-732-2565, ext. 301.