W.B Yeats wrote, An old man is a paltry thing/ a tattered coat upon a stick. While I applaud the apt metaphor, I am tempted to ask: Who is an old man? One who is 60+ or 80+ or one who withdraws from the external world and sinks to self made depths of depression? Growing old is nature’s way of weeding out the canker from the earth to fill it again with greenery. If death is the finality of all forms of life, age is the only uncountable, for, age, is only a number on everyone’s palimpsest to be defaced by progressive numbers. The earth is old, the sky is old and imagined immortals of heaven are old but they are all ageless. Man perhaps is the only creature who bothers about old age as it is the declining phase of life in which the senses weaken, the vital parameters slow down and eventually stop functioning necessitating a final discarding of the body. If you are a Charbakite you say this life has now come to its useless stage and will be consigned to flames. But if you are a believer, the immortal soul will take another frame somewhere. Why fear old age then?
You may think, I am the most incorrigible optimist or the most irrational idealist, impractical and even inhuman. I am prepared to wear all your sobriquets and all your pejorative adjectives on my head with the same irrational pride: But I will reiterate that the old age is the crowning time of life where the mind is mature after the fitful journey of a long life. It is a period where wisdom reigns; a balance sheet of credit and debit, merit and sin, achievements and failures, enjoyment and sufferings are subconsciously analyzed to give the individual the judicious energy to say the final farewell to a world in which he/she played life in a given field, large or small. And now he would leave with this satisfaction that he has played well unmindful of victory and defeat.
Old age is of course dreadful. Man’s energies snap. His vertical existence in many cases ceases and his horizontal existence begins, at times bringing horror for self and dear ones. Sickness, disease, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything man becomes a burden on those who care for him. Yes, this stage is dreadful. But this is what life is. Anything which is bright, loses essence and sinks into dark sea. But life is more than all these built in horrors. Often blindness makes you see the ultimate truth. Sickness makes you dream of lofty encounters with the divine. Like Emerson you dream of youth. Like Hemingway’s Santiago you dream of lions in pre-final slumber.
Today medical science provides ease and comfort. Life expectancy increases decade by decade. Man lives up to hundred or more. But old age comes, as is natural, to everyone. What is expected of us is to make our old age the final conflagration of the spark of life that we are. I have seen old men and women who think that the end is near; therefore all the more urgent to bring your creativity to its highest pitch. Death will come but since time is short we must make most of it. The last flicker of the dying candle is definitely bright. Have you seen sunsets? The sun too paints the west with golden hue. Dissipation of energy is a given. But it should not mean that you have hung up your boots for good. You may not climb the Everest anymore but you can paint, write, speak and even love. Love of life never ends. No old age can sap the energy and instinct to love another human being.
Yes we need care when old age hastens the wasting process. The young ones you created will definitely care for you if you give them your most mature, sober and autumnal love: For life is a display of the rainbow of love. All colours will merge in the final glow of love. When your personal resources of time flows to a different shore you must ride its slowing waves. Prepare your unfulfilled desires, regrets and also your vituperative moments to unite to give an account to your Maker. You have lived a life with some faith, some defiance and also some compromise. Make your Maker to listen to you and speak of it to the young, your flesh and blood : Tell them that Newton's Third Law operates in all branches and offshoots of life , therefore before you act reorient your self in the light of the late wisdom you have gained. Above all be content , be happy you have made the world of your wishes and desires to the best of your potential. Ask for more births to give more to life and before you breathe your last smile and bless all creatures to live behind.
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