My joints creaked and my skin creased... i wasn't able to with naked eyes read...
yyyuppp old age catches up to the best of us and with the trend today of 'aging gracefully' i wanted to deconstruct the concept according to what i have understood.
Recently i met up with an old friend after about five or six years. we are all on the wrong side of 35 now and our typical discussions were about kids, their lunch boxes, their classes, their health and how having two hands wasn't really enough when we have two kids...
But what i was taken aback about and what kept running at the back of my mind throughout the blah blahing was that this friend was so lost in her world of kids, home management and duties to her family that she wasn't privy to the fact that she was looking much older than she ought to and acting likwise. then i remembered how i was at the age of 26 when i was in a similar situation. i also realized that this is indeed the situation that most of us are in.... but why?
Meanwhile, on my trip to Switzerland this year, i had a great opportunity to trek in the most amazing locales. we were observing the fact that while on our way up, drudging along with us were all Swiss ... most of them post 50 years, when we get to the top, it is Indian tourists, mostly young or middle aged who reached there via trains. and then on our way back, my mother pointed out the difference in the manner of walking of people here and there. There, though not really in a hurry, people still walked smartly at a good pace. Here, even if people walked at all, it was as if their legs had a burden to carry. well, may be it would be wrong to apply it to whole population but i am talking of the majority. why?? why are we so old at so young an age?
The answer is, we have trained our minds to see work, walking and activity as a burden. we teach our youngsters that in order to be counted as smart, you must work less and earn more for it. as you get richer, you must walk less and less and work even lesser...
we accept that once we are of a certain age, we must start aging. we must put our bodies last. we must worry about the future, get all worked up about the children's lives and totally neglect ourselves. we accept the fact that as we reach a certain age, our brains must slow down and resist change. that we cannot learn and adapt to the changing surroundings. as we grow older we are to be 'respected ' because we are old now and start maintaining a respectful distance from the younguns...
think about this. if you really want to stay young for however long you live, change today. it is possible.
I am always in awe of my teacher Vithoulkas , a Greek, who is around 84 and has one of the highest and sharpest mind i have ever seen. he is also traveling the whole of Europe to teach and is as active as can be. i take a leaf out of his book when i write this.
Old age is equal to rigidity. you become rigid in your body, losing its suppleness and flexibility. but even more aging is the rigidity in your mind. once you start getting set in a routine and stop doing new things that you cant change and adapt, once you have stopped traveling to places where you don't carry every small thing that you and your kids will need, when you start feeling that your kid should be more obedient to you despite him/ her being 20 years age, when you start dictating how the children should be every minute of their life... you can be sure you have aged....
I believe each of us has tremendous potential in us to do what we want to.. only if we want it. to want something, to dream of something, to continuously have a bigger and better ideal, we need to be young at heart and mind and yes body will follow. if you have stopped staring into the blank and daydreaming, you have aged. if you don't have a personal dream along with all the ones that you have for your kids and and other family, you have aged.
Start dreaming now. let go of things that aren't really important. go out and find your old friends. see how each one is out there. create something new every now and then. laugh, dance and sing. giggle with your friends. lose the fear of making mistakes and stop being narrow minded. world is huge and everybody has a place in this world. open up your heart to it and let the people see the wonderful person there. don't be afraid to get hurt, you will heal as long as you stay a child at heart.
go on live the wonderful life and make every moment count
Dr Seema Mahesh