The Mind Creative
and error, hit and miss. If the medicine doesn’t work, one is
advised to go to a homeopath, or an osteopath, or a naturopath,
or an acupuncturist or a physiotherapist or an ayurved or some
such. Some will go to the saint or holy man (pir), whether living
or dead. Others will ask for prayers from all and sundry. Yet
others wait or shop for potential donors for body parts.
To hear people talk about the “intelligent design” under these
circumstances is not just insensitive but adds insult to injury. One
only has to walk into a nursing home or a hospital to see the state
of decrepitude that the human body suffers with age.
The few who are fortunate enough
to defy the rule and keep
relatively good health in old age
are condemned to live with what
John Kenneth Galbraith called the
“still syndrome”. Younger people
are surprised that these oldies are
“still” doing this and doing that,
like still being able to chat, walk,
eat, travel and enjoy themselves.
The worst offence on the part of
an old man is to ever let slip that
he “still” enjoys the sight of a
beautiful woman. Not for him the pleasures of life, not even the
verbal appreciation of beauty!
Old age is all wisdom but little or no dignity. All old people are
wiser than their younger former selves and most of their younger
counterparts, but few will ever seek to benefit from their wisdom.
Young people avoid them as best they can and society retires them
as early as economically feasible. When young, one assumes that
youth is a permanent state, as if old people were born old. Every
teenager assumes that he was born to forever be young and fit.
Getting old was always pain, but now it is shame as well, thanks
to the pace of technological change. It is exhilarating for the
young but frustrating for the old. In the “good old days” the
younger looked to older people for nearly everything, to solve this
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