We are getting old
You, who already turned 60; your son going through the mid-life crisis in his 40; your niece turning 20 in a few days; your aunt in her 90. Whatever the age, we all know and repeat day after day this truth: we are getting old. And what’s worse: all things going wrong in our life result from our advanced age. Knee pain while running, knee pain even before standing up, heartache, ache for somebody – things that the accumulation of time brings with it.
All those models figuring on ads retouched in Photoshop are much younger, healthier and happier than us. None of them ever complained about knee pain. Our Facebook friends show such a vitality smiling on their selfies, travelling everywhere and meeting lots of made-up and well-dressed people full of life. None of them has ever been cheated, hurt or left by someone, nor has suffered for love, from depression or kidney stone. Everyone around us is doing well better than us. Why? Because we, different from the rest of the world, are getting old.
Babies use tablets, children who still cannot read can program apps, and you, who went to college, don’t even know exactly what a tablet or an app is. You learned English in school and cannot understand the current vocabulary: to twit, to write an egotrip, to support a crowdfunding, to work at a co-working, to listen to a podcast, to check the news feed. The recipes you learned watching your grandma in the kitchen as well as the guitar technique passed on through years by your father have no value, for Google and Youtube offer much better tips on how to live life. In the blink of an eye, you and everything you know became obsolete.
We no longer have the same energy as before for going out several nights, drinking, dancing and following normal routine the next day. Or for travelling to different places, taking busses anywhere, scantly sleeping and eating, as to enjoy the trip the most as possible. We no longer have the same energy for abusing our own body and feeling nothing bad; after all, we already abused it so badly at that time. We thought ourselves indestructible, testing constantly our boundaries. I used to train every day and never had any knee pain; now I have it, because I’m getting old. I used to eat an entire pizza, drink as much soft drink as I wanted and have ice cream for dessert; now I must watch for my cholesterol and glycose levels, because I’m getting old. My natural hair color used to be beautiful; now it’s ugly, because I’m getting old and grey-haired.
What is causing our deterioration, our age or rather our deteriorated view?
Age, this evil thing, messes about us, kills us off. It makes us grumpy, bitter, intolerant, full of aches and remedies we got to take. It moves us away from young people, who are too young to understand the intricacies of aging. It moves us away from old people, who look younger than us by eating cheese every day. Besides increasing the distance in months, years or decades between us and the rest of the world, age increases our emotional distance: no one understands my personal pain. Let alone myself; that’s why I regularly take my medicines and check my Facebook.
The damn age devastates recklessly. There’s no escape for it: it’s scientifically proven that the more one ages, the older one gets, and that the more years go by, the more years of age one accumulates. Believe it or not, more than old, we are growing increasingly older. However, if we are all getting old, don’t we suffer together from the same evil?
