Friday 9th December

One of the things we know from when we are very young is that one day we will be old, if we don’t die before then of course.  But we really don’t like to think about it that much, even when we see on the telly old people sick in Hospital, or shuffling slowly along as we rush to catch that bus.  A bit like smokers who though they know that the cigarettes may well be killing them, manage to push all the gory packaging to the back of their minds as they relentlessly puff away.  And so we push the idea of getting old further and further to the back of our minds; oh yes, it will happen someday but not for a few years yet.

I can remember as a child that anyone over retirement was definitely old, and even people in their fifties donned the clothes of the old, behaved as if they were old, and actually became old – despite their relatively young years.  But being ‘young’ has become a religion, we worship youth and do everything including surgery to stay looking young.  As if we are ashamed to admit that we might be getting on a bit we cling to the idea that we are still young.  “Why, I don’t feel any different than when I was forty” we hear ourselves saying.  But it is a lie.  The body, although pampered like never before, is ageing.  But we are persuaded that nothing is now off-limits for us ‘oldies’; parachute jumps, marathons, line dancing – you name it, nothing is impossible.   And somehow if you aren’t up and dancing, or cycling miles each day, or just pretending that you don’t ‘ache in the places where you used to play’, as Leonard sung so wonderfully, then you are in danger of becoming old.

And so we smile and when people ask how are we “Ca va?” we reply automatically “Tres bein, merci.”   We are afraid to admit that we might be getting old and feeling it a bit, the worst sin in this golden age of eternal youth.