HAVE THE WILL TO LIVE BUT BODY IS BETRAYING US
I ATTENDED a 21st birthday celebration a few days ago. I realised with a shudder how long it has been since I was this tender age.
I couldn’t imagine, at 21, that I would even see 80, let alone be married for 57 years.
Yet daily I meet folks who proudly announce that they are 79, 80, 81 and so forth.
I met a beautiful lady who looked so good it was hard to accept that she was 90. (That one’s for you, aunty Kathleen).
In my day, anyone older than 50 was old. Anything older than that, and they were revered as ancient.
I recall how our purchases of life insurance or retirement annuities were centred around ages 60 to 65.
That was the life expectancy way back in the 1960s.
I remember the insurance agent underlining the fact that bread, 30 years on, would cost about R30 a loaf.
Those dire predictions had us frantically signing the application for life insurance.
There is a word for discrimination against age these days. According to the political science academic, Susan Pharr, it joins racism, sexism, classism, ableism, anti-Semitism and heterosexism as the seven social and politically incorrect isms that have the ability to control and destroy lives. It is called ageism.
I was offered a credit facility by my bank at the age of 70 (10 years ago). I must have looked confused. But she sweetly explained that the banks did not discriminate on age in fiscal transactions. That was as frightening as it was reassuring.
Cain lived to 730. Adam, Noah, Methuselah and Jared, a forefather of Noah, all made it to over 900. What were they eating (or smoking)?
It underlined that nowadays the aged are not 60, but 70 and upwards.
A little while ago, in my hometown, we laid to rest a grand old lady of 100, chipper and sprightly up to the day the bugle sounded for her.
So what has changed? Better medication? Alternate lifestyles? Healthier diets?
More gymnasia for fitness?
I don’t remember any of those when it comes to the big guys of the Old Testament.
The infamous Cain lived to be 730 years old. Adam, Noah, Methuselah and Jared, a forefather of Noah, all made it to over 900 years!
What were they eating (or smoking)?
Old age is fine. Long life is fine, but have we made the adjustments to cope with this reality?
The mind survives, as does the will to live, but the body betrays us, as TS Eliot so shudderingly reminds us.
So us old men with wrinkled dugs who have seen it all need to be looked after in a special way.
We need to upgrade the facilities in order to preserve and retain the wisdom and experience locked in these long years.
We have been around for a long time, showing great heart against life’s vicissitudes. How about showing us some heart?