Aging - A Commentary

When you are young, you feel invincible and evergreen. The thought – you will grow old one day like others you see – never crosses your mind. However, time – I am not sure the most powerful adversary or friend – slowly and unbeknown to you does it magic. You begin to show signs of time. Hair turns gray, skin wrinkles, arteries harden, and joints pop. Your eyes don’t see as well and you need a thick pair of lenses – bi-focal, tri-focal whatever works. You remember vividly what happened some three or four decades ago, but can’t remember what happened two minutes ago or where you left your car key. Your neurons in the brain do not make quick connections. You cannot retrieve promptly anything from your memory. You know it’s there. You try to defy odds – color your hair, wear a toupee, use skin care, go to the gym, watch what you eat, do sudoku. You tend to think you are the same person you were some 30 years ago. You still like pretty girls and their smiling faces that bring sunshine, but they think you are too old. Now you are everyone’s uncle or grand-pa. You wonder if the so-called Golden Years are really golden as you pop those pills to control your blood pressure, sugar, cholesterol, arthritis, and so on. You feel lucky if you don’t need a wheel chair, or a pace maker or a cardiac stent or chemotherapy. You tend to attend more funerals reminding you constantly when your number may be called. So, if I were you I would do the things you always wanted to do, but were afraid or did not have the money or the time. Now that time is really in short supply and you have nothing to lose, just do it. When your number is up, you don’t want to leave with a feeling of what you could have or should have.