by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ
Those of us who sometimes find ourselves complaining of the inconveniences that come with growing old would do well to remember what the French entertainer, Maurice Chevalier, once said: “Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.” The alternative to growing old is, of course, dying young. If we don’t like to die young, then we should be ready to bear with the inevitable inconveniences that come with growing old. We can’t have our cake and eat it too.
One thing good about growing old is that its manifestations come in gradual, almost predictable stages. Can you imagine what a terrifying experience growing old would be if its manifestations appeared in sudden, unpredictable surges? How would you feel if you slept one night with a full hair on your head and woke up the following morning with all your hair suddenly gone? Can you imagine what a shock it would be if you took a nap one afternoon with a beautiful and youthful face, and woke up an hour later to see an old, heavily wrinkled face in the mirror? Fortunately, nature is very kind when it comes to the manifestations of old age. We generally lose our hair, our teeth, our youthful features in gradual, almost predictable stages. Nature gently prepares us for our old age step by step. Unless we have resolved to closely monitor every little manifestation of our own aging process, we will hardly notice the fact that we are indeed growing older every single day.
Not so long ago, I had several vicarious experiences of what it would be like if old age manifested itself in surge-like movements. When I first started using YouTube, I enjoyed searching for the music videos of the 70s rock stars I used to idolize when I was still in high school. Back then, I collected posters of such rock stars and secretly wished I had their long, uncombed hair; their young, devil-may-care looks… I expected to see the same young, carefree rock stars in the music videos I searched for on YouTube. Well, some of their old videos met my expectations. But their latest ones were quite a shock! Not a few of the videos featured old men with white hair and wrinkled faces; and it took a while for me to get used to the idea of old men beating their drums and making their electric guitars weep like wild teenagers. The shock was, of course, a result of the fact that I had not been able to see how they looked during the years in between. I did not witness the gradual transition. All I saw was the sudden metamorphosis.
The shock would be the same if old age came to us all of a sudden, and not in the progressive, almost foreseeable way it comes to each of us now
Not everyone lasts long enough to reach old age. For that reason alone, old age is indeed a gift – a gift we should be immensely grateful for because we happen to be among the lucky ones to whom it has been given. But, it is also a gift for several other reasons.
Old age is a gift because it is a time in our life when we can finally take a more relaxed attitude towards life in general. Much of our young life had been spent doing things that we “needed” to do – getting an education, preparing ourselves for our future, obtaining a degree, finding a good job, working hard to provide for our family, building a house of our own, sending our children to school… But, by the time we reach our sixties (and even if we have not officially retired yet), much of that should have been over and done with. Finally, we can slow down and find time for the things we “want” to do: to travel, to read all the books we’ve been wanting to read but simply had no time to, to play the guitar or the piano again after many years of having to put them aside in order to concentrate on our studies and our careers. Old age is “me-time” in the truest of that phrase.
Old age is also a gift because it is an opportunity to celebrate what we have achieved in life, regardless of its degree of significance in other people’s eyes. Even if others think we have not really achieved that much in our life according to their standards, there is always something we have done which deserves to be celebrated by us – something that we should feel proud of and happy about. When I graduated from San Pablo Seminary in 1982, one of the best gifts I received was a card from one of my teachers, the late Ms. Agnes Bautista, the caption of which read: “It is not how far you have reached that matters. It is how many obstacles you had to overcome in order to get there.” Indeed, it is not the size of the house we have built, the kind of car we drive around, or the names of the schools we were able to send our children to that matter. It is the struggles we had to wage in order to achieve them that ultimately count. Many of us had to overcome enormous obstacles in order to reach where we are now. While we were out there struggling, there was not much time to stop and pat ourselves on the back for our own efforts. Old age provides us with the long overdue opportunity to do precisely that: to be grateful for what we were able to achieve, to celebrate not only our victories but also the battles we needed to wage in order to achieve them.
Old age is, moreover, a gift because it provides us with the opportunity to put a proper closure on our life – something which many of those who die all of a sudden will not have the privilege of doing. Sudden death often leaves the deceased – as well as the bereaved – with plenty of “unfinished business.” Growing old until one dies, on the other hand, gives us the time to finish our pending business before we depart from this life for good. We are given the time to ask forgiveness from those we have wronged, to make amends, to try to repair what can still be repaired with regard to the things we might have broken, to rebuild the bridges we have burnt, to reconnect with the people we have alienated along our way.
More importantly, old age provides us with the opportunity to reconnect and, perhaps, even make peace with our own past selves. I read somewhere that each of us is, in a way, a house inhabited by several past “selves.” Inside one room of that house lives the young boy we once were still struggling with his fears. Inside another is the teenager we once were still grappling with his regrets. Out in the garden, alone, is the disillusioned young man we once were still trying to get his faith in life back. We are often unaware of the presence of these “co-inhabitants.” But they are very much a part of us; nay, they are “us.” Their unresolved issues, their unaddressed cares and concerns influence the decisions we make and the steps we take in our present journey, without our knowing it.
Old age gives us the time and the opportunity to reach out to the young boy we once were and assure him that there’s nothing more to fear, for the monsters and the demons he continues to be afraid of are now gone; to reach out to the teenager we once were and assure him that making mistakes is part of growing up and that his 60-year old self has actually become a much better person because of the lessons he learned from his mistakes; and to reach out to the disillusioned young man we once were and tell him the good news that, many years later, his 60-year old self has discovered that, in spite of everything, life is good – and it’s a great privilege merely to be alive.
Old age is, furthermore, a gift because it gives us the opportunity to give something back to life without expecting anything in return. In our younger years, much of what we did was probably done with a view to receiving a corresponding reward: a promotion, a salary raise, a good professional reputation, the respect of our peers… We needed those things then and, hence, many of our efforts were exerted in the hope of attaining them in return. In old age, we can finally serve for the sake of serving, and give for the sake of giving – with no eye on what will come back to us as a result. Old age is “me-time,” but it can also be, at the same time, the very opposite of “me-time” which is “others-time.” Those two “times” can comfortably sit together when one is old.
Finally, old age is a gift because it affords us the opportunity to prepare for our death according to what our own religious beliefs tell us. As Catholics, we believe that part of the preparation we must undertake for our death is to approach it with a soul cleansed through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Other religions have their own prescriptions for their followers as to what they must do to prepare for their own death. Old age, fortunately, gives all of us the time and the opportunity to undertake those prescribed preparations for our inevitable leap into The Great Beyond.
I am not saying, of course, that everything about growing old is good and beautiful. I have no intention of sugar-coating old age. Let’s face it: old age is something we all wish we would not have to go through without having to die young. And the older we get, the more our minds are visited by questions about who will take care of us when we get sick, how we shall die, how long and how painful our dying will be, and so on and so forth. We will all die someday; and no matter how hard we try to prepare for it -- the time, the place and the manner of our dying are ultimately beyond our control. The thing to do is to cherish each new day of our life as a priceless gift, and to trust that He who knew what was the best time, the best place and the best way for us to be born into this world also knows what would be the best time, the best place, and the best way for us to leave it.
