Home » Archives » 08. November 2006
On Getting Old
November 8, 2006
One day we’ll look at the mirror and see wrinkles forming on our once gleaming faces. We will notice that our skin sags and that it has lost its elasticity. Our muscles become less flexible and our vision fails us, so does our hearing. One day, we’ll walk a bit stooped and our muscle and joints will ache with every movement. We will notice that our walks have grown shorter and slower, our hearing becomes less audible and our energy depleting.
When that day comes, we can no longer jump as high or worse, cannot jump at all. We wont be able to run fast or not run at all. Then we look at the mirror and no longer can see the trace of youth that was once there during our glorious years. We realize that we can no longer do the things we used to and that we have limited time to figure out where it all went. Time has consumed us and we have aged. Good thing if upon aging, we have become wiser… for wisdom is, I believe, the greatest consolation of being old.
One day, I will be the old just like the folks I see on the streets with cane and grey hairs, with callous hands and all the symptoms of being “soon to expire.” But perhaps I’ll be happy because I am going to live my life best while I have the energy to make things happen and while am at the prime of my youth. Carpe diem (seize the day!), as the saying goes. And when I have enjoyed my youth without apprehensions, explored the world while I can run and walk and travel, wore the clothes that express my mood and my identity, expressed my feelings to someone freely or my thoughts through my writing, made way for the things I desire to accomplish, then growing old will be graceful. And I would embrace it as a fulfilling retirement. Having aged would be a refuge from a once busy life and it wouldn’t be so bad a thing. It would perhaps be a rewarding experience to have lived that long with the opportunity to sit back and reminisce the glorious days of long ago.
So those who are young and able, live life to the fullest. Seek your heart’s greatest desire. Know your dreams and attain them because life has given you the chance to run miles, to walk with a friend or special someone and share the journey, to taste pain and joy through many relationships that will spice your life, to learn and be wise. Someday, all these chances will be gone and if you have not made the most of the opportunities laid on your path, and have ignored the promptings of your hearts, you will sit back and evaluate the years that passed just like old people do… only with one big difference – you have many regrets of the things you could have done but didn’t do. Then you realize you no longer have the power to conquer all of your dreams.
