Youth and Age

Many people fear about aging. They check their hairline in the mirror every day, and they had gone from being proud to say their age. I had read a book, and in the book, a sick old man said, “The young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live everyday when you don’t know what’s going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you will be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you will be sexy－and you believe them! It’s such nonsense.”

I think that everyone afraid to grow old. But why don’t we change our thinking upside down? Why don’t we embrace aging? As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed at twenty-two, you’d always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay. It’s growth. It’s more than the negative that you’re going to die, it’s also the positive that you understand you’re going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.

Maybe some people would wonder that if aging were so valuable, why people always say, “Oh, if I were young again.” You never hear people say, “I wish I were sixty-five.” I think that it reflects unsatisfied lives and unfulfilled lives. If you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, and do more. If you are always battling against getting older, you are always going to be unhappy, because it will happen anyhow. The fact is that you are going to die eventually.

It is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that. This is your time to be your age. You have to find what is good and true and beautiful in your life. Looking back makes you competitive. Have confidence in yourself but always remain open to other points of view. You are always learning - your brain hasn't closed its filing cabinet - so add new thoughts and ideas to it to broaden your mind. Aging is just another stage of our journey with its own mysteries and learning possibilities, we choose what to do with these opportunities.(390 words)