Would we drink from fountain of youth?
IN
older age, does my energy or lack of it, define how I am going at the moment and would I like to return to a time when I had more energy?
Participating in activities with people of a similar age is always comforting because if you are travelling at the same pace as them, one can feel a sense of contentment.
However, it can also be deceptive and a comfort zone can be easily destroyed in a few given situations.
For example, going for a bushwalk with some 30-yearolds and finding they have to stop every now and then to let you catch up.
Also by babysitting a small grandchild for a whole day and night and realising how tired you are at the end of it.
Forty years ago, we could do that with our own kids all day every day and for years on end. And again, by spending some hours splitting wood or digging in the garden and then the next day realising how stiff and sore you are.
Energy reality strikes home when making a comparison with the past or a comparison with those from a younger generation.
So, the question is. If I could drink at the fountain of youth, would I want to be young again with all that energy?
Before deciding it might be wise to remember how frenetic our younger days were with busy working hours, bringing up children, playing sport while partaking in a hectic social life.
A lot of energy was simply needed to survive.
We probably took the energy for granted never believing that one day it would recede. Further to this, if we were young again, would we do anything differently?
American jazz musician Eubie Blake said he would. On his 100th birthday, he proclaimed, “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”
Oscar Wilde, always one to comment, announced that, “To get back to my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early or be respectable.”
But in the end, even if we think we are going okay, others might not see us in that light.
Hopefully how we picture ourselves at an older age is not how we perceived older people when we were young.
Each person’s view of themselves at an older age is totally relative. Some of us are happy to be the age we are and some are not.
Former French prime minister Georges Clemenceau on his 80th birthday was sitting in the Champs Elysees sipping coffee when two beautiful Parisian women walked by.
He turned to his compatriots at the table and said, “Oh, to be 70 again.”