ONCE a week, I meet with two fellow senior citizens, Pol Causing and Melvin de Leon and; and near-senior Bong Gustilo over coffee. Almost always, squeeze Pol, now age 84, for what keeps him physically and mentally fit, as if he were 20 years younger.
He shares different “secrets” that all refer to healthy foods, moderate exercise and laughter.
One of his favorite songs is Father and Son, where a father tells his son, “Look at me, I am old but I’m happy.”
A retired lawyer/professor, Pol belies the notion that the older a man ages, the closer he gets to Kingdom Come.
Why be in a hurry? We senior citizens enjoy the privilege of paying less for goods. By just showing a senior citizen’s ID in a restaurant, we eat VAT-free and enjoy an additional 20 percent discount.
For example, I recently ordered a breakfast of pandesal, sausage, egg and coffee worth P52. After borrowing my ID, the counter girl asked me to pay only P36.40.
Honestly though, if there’s one privilege I avoid as much as possible, it’s buying discounted “maintenance” medicines. Discount notwithstanding, it could still rob us of planned options like travels and vacations.
Old but healthy individuals reflect deathless character and pricelessness – just like the old masters’ paintings, diamonds, old silverware, old furniture, old coins, old books, aged wine and vintage cars. Greece, remember, thrives because of tourists on “time-travel” to the ruins of past civilizations.
While we don’t usually lament the loss of a new thing, we cry over the breakage of an antique plate or flower base.
Some old books are so packed with wisdom that they keep their authors alive in our hearts. Long-gone Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and Socrates still impart wisdom to the present generation.
Strange as it seems, “old” is an old word with a “young” undertone, derived from an Indo-European root that means “to nourish.” No wonder, when we ask a young child for his age, it’s “How old are you?”
It is often only in old age that we cherish the memories of our youth. We love to look at our old pictures and reminisce and share with the young the memories of the “good old days when we were young.” How we regret not having preserved most of our old photographs!
In the final analysis, however, let the Bible remind us that, whether young or old, dust we all are and to dust we shall return. There could be no adventure without traveling from youthfulness to oldness. In fact, the young ones beg of us young once to relay to them what adventures we have lived through.
I recently bought a book on Benjamin Franklin – whose picture appears on all US $100 bill bills – and was surprised to read that he was a boy born to very poor parents but worked hard to be somebody. He was already 81 in 1787 when he was elected to the Constitutional Convention that would frame the Constitution of the newly-created United States of America.
After reading Franklin’s biography, it buoyed my spirit; at 69, I don’t have to retire from work. A writer writes for a lifetime.
Time could toughen us seniors. Expertise in a vocation or profession requires time.
The people who fear old age are those who think of it as gateway to the graveyard. But death does not choose between the old and the young.
As the saying goes, “It’s not the years in our life but the life in our years that counts.” (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
