Age is just a number

Come out of the frame of seeing yourself from the lens of world; ask yourself what you want and what would make you happy. As long as you are alive, there is always another day, a new day to start fresh. So next time when you attend some retirement function, don’t wish them just healthy and peaceful life, ask them, what’s next?’

Bhanu has recently retired from her job as a head mistress. She lost her husband a couple of years ago. She didn’t really even have had enough time to mourn for her loss as she had to bring her children up singlehandedly. Her son is a doctor. At last she has time now to think of her old passion, painting. She was good at it and a trained one too but never found time to pursue her passion.

She started painting again. But she was constantly disturbed by her daughter-in-law who left two small kids in her care whenever the couple went out. ‘After all that was what the retired people were supposed to do’, her daughter-in-law would say to her son.

Retired people are often expected to take rest, take care of grandkids, find solace in spiritual things and disturb their children as less as possible. With the advent of medical technology and healthy food habits, the general age expectancy has gone high; fifty is not considered old anymore and sixty is just another step of middle age. I often wonder what the exact age is at which people grow old.

I have seen people at sixty years saying that they hardly feel thirty. At sixty, my mom never accepts charity from fellow passengers ,who offer her seat, saying that she is not yet that old. They are not lying. You are as old as you think you are. People keep postponing their dreams and their passions for the sake of careers and family. And then after retirement they realize it’s too late. You are still breathing, and that’s the best evidence that it’s not yet late.

Shruti is an aeronautical engineer, a beautiful, confident and hardworking woman of whom the whole family and friends were proud of. But the day she declared that she was getting married to a colleague, there was a huge furore and denial in the whole family. Shruti is 55.

‘What would people think, what would you get out of this marriage at this age, you can’t even bear children, then why marriage now?’ friends and relatives questioned her openly. Shruti was as clear of her decision of marriage as she was of her career throughout her life.

‘I want to marry because I love this person and this must be enough reason for two people to get married I guess.’ She shut everyone up with just this one simple answer.