Thoughts about growing old

Most people I know would like to live only as long as they are productive.

Beginning with myself, I mean, I dread to imagine myself at age 70 years old, bed-ridden and unable to even bring myself up to tend personally to my basic needs. That, in which opening my mouth or chewing my food brings total discomfort to my sagging facial muscles, is unthinkable for me. Signing-off with relative youth seems to be the best retirement plan to make.

A silly idea indeed from a silly person like me.

For how many septegenarians or octogenarians have we read or heard who have been living productive lives despite their late ages? A lot, we can say.

And then I watched Violet Hensley from Arkansas (United States) on one prime-time news. My jaw dropped with awe at seeing this 90 year old lady playing the fiddle with gusto, making her own fiddles ( and selling them as well ) in her own home and whose hobby includes......(get ready for this)....bare-back riding horses. Her life is full with vigor and enthusiasm with a picturesque smile ready to infect everyone who stikes a conversation with her.

To think that I always have a soft spot when seeing my 62 year-old father lifting mineral waters and LPG gas tanks during deliveries to his regular customers. I am always tempted to put a stop to his activity by promising to offer more financial support to him and to our mother.

But it is not all about the money, I believe, as my thinking matures through the years.It is about living their own productive lives.It is about not sitting down or not laying in bed waiting to grow older.

As I write this, my father is also practicing his bowling skills as a participant in their upcoming Knights of Columbus tournament (I bet Paeng Nepomuceno will attempt another comeback if he ever reads this). And my mother? Well, she will likely be filling his spot in our modest store (minus the deliveries, of course), frantically running around when the students at the adjacent school starts buying simultaneously.

Most of our grandparents and parents have known the secret, it is not the age that makes us old rather the "oldness" that we imaginatively feel with our age.

Do not limit ourselves with what God has not even hinder us with.
Make plans for your 65th, 70th, 75th and so on years.
Indulge in your hobbies and doctor-recommended exercises.
Try new things. Try old things you forgot to do before because of your busy life. Laugh with your granchildren (or great grandchildren at that! ). Keep serving the Lord in the littlest of things your frail body can do.

Be always young at heart and enjoy life on earth in its full term.
Just remember, no matter what your age is now, we are still "children" in God's eyes.

God bless us all.