A Time for Reflection
Is this sunrise or sunset? The optimist in in me says it is sunrise.Sunrise.. sunset.. swiftly flows the day;
One season following another,
Laden with happiness and tear.
(Fiddler on the Roof)
To everything there is a season,
A thing for every purpose under heaven:
A time to weep, at time to laugh,
A time to mourn, and a time to dance
- Ecclesiastes
To that, add a season for soul searching.
While young people may anguish over their 30th birthday and try to hide their 40th, it is with the 50th that most start to see themselves as beginning to be old. If this is what researchers are uncovering, than I, nearer to 60th than 50th, must be antiqued. It is with a start that I realize how old I am because I never think about it and now that I do, I ask myself where and how all those years have gone by without my feeling the passage of time. Have I been asleep like Rip Van Winkle?
For those in their 50s, the turn of the last century, more than another other, brings a major reappraisal of the direction one’s life have taken, of one’s priorities and, more particularly, how best to use the remaining years. The 50s is a turning point in the aging process during which people are made to feel their age more acutely than ever, writes a sociologist. However, for Confucius, it was at 50 that he felt he truly understood human nature. The sage attached different meaning and importance to the different stages of his life. He wrote:
"When I was 15, I set my mind on learning;
at 30, I held on firmly to what I've learnt;
at 40, I knew all about managing affairs and understanding truth;
at 50, I realised that Heaven had its mandate and I blamed neither Heaven nor Man.
at 60, I could tell whether a man was telling the truth and judge his character by listening to his speech and
at 70, I could follow my heart's wishes and not make mistakes."
(A little bit like a Frank Sinatra’s song that Robin Williams resurrected in recent times, recounting the stages of a man's life).
Yet, says a psychologist, there is much taboo about examining your life in your 50s. For many, there is a silent despair and a fear of becoming irrelevant in work or marriage with no real alternative in sigh. For those who are able to make vital choices, there is a hard time of personal struggle early in the decade. Readers who are young may not find empathy with what I say. Nevertheless, "Years from now when you talk about this - and I know you will - be kind" (‘Tea and Sympathy’)
No doubt men and women react differently to aging. Speaking for myself, it may not be rosy but it is certainly not grim by any means. Along with the reflectiveness, there is a feeling of wisdom not known before. I feel freer to enjoy life and, in the liberation, I am able to see a broader view. The psychological crises triggered by reminders, subtle or otherwise about aging, have lost their bite. The true nature of aging is highly subjective and I see the onset of old age not as reaching some specific year of life but the onset of physical impairment, the first undeniable harbinger of old age. It is after all not the years in your life but life in your years that counts.
Going by that criterion, I want to think I am biologically youthful while chronologically mature.
posted by Victor Lai @ 3:51 PM
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