Maturity may
bring about some level of sensibilities but age has nothing to do with maturity
and sensibilities. Perhaps age and experience can make a difference in the way
we approach a subject or the manner we
perform or execute a particular task or tackle a certain problem, but I find that age has nothing to do with how one
thinks. While I am not saying that
we are no older than how we feel, I like to believe that we remain forever
ourselves no matter what age we are. The saying that people mellow as they grow
old often eludes me although it is not impossible for us to become better
persons when we make conscious efforts to improve ourselves if we know and
acknowledge our failings.
I believe age
plays a role in the way one processes and assesses information. How we assess a certain situation largely
depends on what we have learnt from previous experiences although our regards about the world generally
remain unchanged at best they may be manifested in different forms over the
years. It is interesting to note that in
the French classes that I attend at the Alliance Francaise, I see that
students who are still going to school somehow are much relaxed during
classes whereas adults have a tendency to try to
rationalize everything and analyze the workings of certain sentences or the
logic of what is printed in the
texts instead of simply enjoying the texts and feel the language. How wonderful
it is to be totally unassuming and open to whatever information
you might be handed.
These days,
apart from reading novels and some non-fictions, I also read articles that talk
about how to prevent dementia and avoid amnesia simply because I get a little
worrisome whenever I become
forgetful. Then I remind myself that I was also a forgetful and absent minded
person particularly in my teens as I never remembered anything I had studied in
school anyway. I used to take everything rather seriously in my youth when I
was often lacking in confidence
and at times feeling smug and righteous and having problems with angst and mood
swings and now that I try not to take
most things too seriously, I do not think that older necessarily means wiser.
One thing I have learnt is that the world remains utterly unchanged despite our
efforts and humanity never fails
to intrigue.
A friend has
passed me some issues of London Review of Books and I came across an article
written by Jenny Diski . The article
is a review on the book “Out of Time” authored by Lynne Segal. In her article entitled, “However I Smell” ,
Diski writes, “One of the problems of ageing is knowing when to start
complaining about being old.”
Diski relates about how an
woman who worked with elderly people had emailed to tell her that the 85-year-olds she worked with
would describe people her age young after having read something of hers in
which she described herself, at 66 , as old.
Diski also
writes in the said article,
“ ….the
degeneration of the body will alter and limit how you can live, whether you can
get out, continue to work and travel. I can’t think of anything about the
reality of ageing which improves a person’s life. The wisdom people speak of
that is supposed to come to us in old age seems to be in much shorter supply
than I imagined, and apart from that , it’s a matter of how self-deceptively,
or stoically, you are able or prepared to put up with the depletions,
dependency and indignities of getting old.”
So aptly put ,
indeed. While we must be prepared to
accept some certainties or limitations of life, we tend to avoid
thinking about growing old though
mortality is ineluctable. I believe that everything I hear or read is something
I have meant to hear or read. You
hear what you want to hear, you see what you want to see and you read what
you want to read. When I was thinking about dignified aging, the article
“However I Smell” presented
itself. It is published in Volume
36 Number 9 issue of the London Review of Books. As I grow older, I certainly find that my
reserve of optimism has diminished in its supply so is the
abundance of spontaneity while
cynicism has its way of inviting itself into one’s mind, firmly engrained. In
some ways I miss my youth when I could get excited over things and look at stuff through rose tinted
glasses. You win some, you lose some.
Whatever works.
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