Monday, September 08, 2008 The joy of living By Henry L. Yu, M.D.
NOTHING really compares to the time in our life when we were the young ones in a world all our own.
It was the so-called Stage of Youth, when we were the reigning teenagers of the Jam Session era; and when there was still so much time to commit mistakes and learn from them.
It was that time when life was loaded with so much excitement, frolic and fun.
Plus, we yet had a face that refreshed, a body to die for, and had everything that spelled vim, vigor, vitality and vibrance.
Then when we were in our 20s, we used to say: “Tita is 45; she’s old” or “Tito is 55 but he’s still a lady-killer” or things like that. But look. We’ve reached the Golden Years.
It seems like everything’s the same, except for some a few changes, which are mostly for the better as children of God and
as citizens of our country.
Yes, it’s only the age that moves forward. Basically, we are the same Pepe and Pilar and Nena that we used to be. The only difference is we can no longer eat too much of fatty foods, like lechon, humba, chicharon bulaklak or sour things, like green mangoes.
Climbing stairs would make our nose flare and leave us panting. We find it hard to stand up after some prolonged sitting.
Then when we wake up in the morning, we have a litany of aches here, there and everywhere. We follow the “early to bed, early to rise” schedule. So we sleep at 9 p.m. and wake up at 2 a.m. and cannot remember what we need to do.
We read the newspaper at arm’s length, and with wrinkled forehead and half-closed eyes. We sometimes forget where we placed our eyeglasses only to find it’s on top of the TV set.
We find it hard to put on our socks sitting down. We don’t mind much what people say, so we go ahead and do our thing.
We rest our head on a pillow and find some drool stains in the morning. We watch TV and we become teary-eyed even if the show is not a tearjerker. We wake up from our sleep every two or three hours to go to the bathroom and to get a drink of water.
But be it as it may, now that we’re into our 50s, we cannot do anything but to accept the fact that we have finally arrived.
So, let’s seize the moment and enjoy the best of the Golden Years: new discoveries, new dimensions, career moves, and reinventions. Life is beautiful.
