14th Mar 2012 A Young Man's 90th Birthday

I was invited to a family barbecue by a friend last night, to celebrate the 90th birthday of his grandfather. As it was rather a mild spring evening, the dinner table was set in the garden of their villa. I was a bit surprised to find that the birthday 'boy', the grandfather himself was in full charge of the cooking, with my friend as his assistant given the duty of keeping everybody happy, their glasses full and their plates piled up with a great variety of food.

Apart from myself, the only other invited guest was a middle aged lady who paid the grandfather a compliment: ' ... You conserve yourself so very well!', to which the old boy replied: 'I don't use any conservatives. The only time I realize I am old is when I see my children all look SO old!!' While every body was laughing and clapping, he whispered in my ear: 'The minute they are out of sight, I am and I feel young again!' followed by a loud hearty chuckle.

Every once in a while people talk about old age and often make jokes about it. Like labels on food cans, the 'Sell by', 'Consume before' or 'Expired' date only indicate time and the quality of the content is in top form, or not. Not the appearance. The expired content might look okay, but the food has turned bad. Yet, too often, people judge others to be old purely by the number of years of their age and their physical appearance.

The well known poet Ronsard wrote in one of his verses : 'A man is not old if he doesn't think so; nobody is old if he doesn't want to be.'

Some people choose to change their appearance by means of surgery to minimise or erase physical signs of old age but, however handsome or beautiful you might look afterwards, you are definitely old if your attitude to life, your outlook to the future, in other words your mind is. Then, and only then, you are old.

Old age is a personal choice.

Tags: oldboy, personalchoice

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