{"id":180,"date":"2012-03-31T01:25:40","date_gmt":"2012-03-31T01:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/?p=180"},"modified":"2019-05-22T02:15:37","modified_gmt":"2019-05-22T02:15:37","slug":"one-does-not-improve-with-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/?p=180","title":{"rendered":"One does not improve with age"},"content":{"rendered":"

Old age is all wisdom but little or no dignity… Getting old was always pain, but now it is shame as well, thanks to the pace of technological change… To hear people talk about the \u201cintelligent design\u201d under these circumstances is not just insensitive but adds insult to injury.\u00a0 One only has to walk into a nursing home or a hospital to see the state of decrepitude that the human body suffers with age.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(Published in Daily Times, 29 June 2006)<\/em><\/p>\n

At a lunch in celebration of her official 80th birthday recently, Queen Elizabeth II amused her audience with this quotation from Groucho Marx: \u201cAnyone can get old, all you have to do is live long enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The truth, however, is that while everyone wants to live long, no one wants to get old. \u00a0And with good reason too. \u00a0For most people, being old is not just a pain in the ass, it is quite literally a pain all over. \u00a0The bones creak, the spine stoops, the joints hurt and the flesh, or what is left of it, is often sore.\u00a0 The hand will not hold, the teeth (if there are many left, that is) will not chew and the stomach will not digest.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the blood pressure and the blood sugar level will either be too high or too low, never just right. Bone density will definitely be low when it should be high and the reverse will be true for cholesterol level, high when it should be low.\u00a0 Whereas the blocked arteries will not let blood pass freely, the bladder will not hold, allowing an embarrassingly free flow.\u00a0 Cardiac arrest, renal failure, hip fracture, soft bones and tissue decay are the terms in currency.\u00a0 It is Murphy\u2019s Law in old age: everything that can possibly go wrong, will go wrong.<\/p>\n

No jam or butter over one\u2019s toast in the waning years.\u00a0 One must avoid eggs and desist from sweets, pastries and cakes.\u00a0 Pickles are too acidic and fried food does an old man no good.\u00a0 Chocolates are out.\u00a0 And, of course, one better quit drinking and smoking before it\u2019s too late, whatever that means. \u00a0Keeping awake during the day is hard, but a good night\u2019s sleep is a rare luxury.\u00a0 Sleepless nights and sleepy days is the natural state in old age.<\/p>\n

While not an iota of the body seems to be in working order, unlike most good products, the human body comes neither with a manufacturer\u2019s warranty, nor diagram, nor spare parts nor after-sales service.\u00a0 It\u2019s all trial and error, hit and miss.\u00a0 If the medicine doesn\u2019t work, one is advised to go to a homeopath, or an osteopath, or a naturopath, or an acupuncturist or a physiotherapist or an ayurved or some such. Some will go to the saint or holy man (pir<\/em>), whether living or dead.\u00a0 Others will ask for prayers from all and sundry.\u00a0 Yet others wait or shop for potential donors for body parts.<\/p>\n

To hear people talk about the \u201cintelligent design\u201d under these circumstances is not just insensitive but adds insult to injury.\u00a0 One only has to walk into a nursing home or a hospital to see the state of decrepitude that the human body suffers with age.<\/p>\n

The few who are fortunate enough to defy the rule and keep relatively good health in old age are condemned to live with what John Kenneth Galbraith called the \u201cstill syndrome\u201d.\u00a0 Younger people are surprised that these oldies are \u201cstill\u201d doing this and doing that, like still being able to chat, walk, eat, travel and enjoy themselves.\u00a0 The worst offence on the part of an old man is to ever let slip that he \u201cstill\u201d enjoys the sight of a beautiful woman.\u00a0 Not for him the pleasures of life, not even the verbal appreciation of beauty!<\/p>\n

Old age is all wisdom but little or no dignity.\u00a0 All old people are wiser than their younger former selves and most of their younger counterparts, but few will ever seek to benefit from their wisdom.\u00a0 Young people avoid them as best they can and society retires them as early as economically feasible.\u00a0 When young, one assumes that youth is a permanent state, as if old people were born old.\u00a0 Every teenager assumes that he was born to forever be young and fit.<\/p>\n

Getting old was always pain, but now it is shame as well, thanks to the pace of technological change.\u00a0 It is exhilarating for the young but frustrating for the old.\u00a0 In the \u201cgood old days\u201d the younger looked to older people for nearly everything, to solve this and to handle that.\u00a0 Now, a father can\u2019t even handle a remote control of his VCR without the help of his child.\u00a0 Even 5-6 year-olds can handle some of the essential gadgets of modern life, such as a camera or a computer, better than 50 year-olds.<\/p>\n

Being older now means that there are certain job titles one cannot even understand, let alone work at.\u00a0 Consider, for example, a \u201cSecurities Lending Junior Trader\u201d.\u00a0 Or think of an \u201cArchitectural Furniture Director.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is true, of course, that old age is less kind to some than others.\u00a0Saudi Arabia\u2019s King Fahd, custodian of the two holy mosques, could be counted among the living dead since the age of 72, after suffering a stroke.\u00a0 He died ten years later.\u00a0 ButMalaysia\u2019s former prime minister, Mahathir Mohammad, is a one-man Opposition Party at age 81, firing on all cylinders, attacking Bush, Blair and Ahmad Badawi, his own handpicked prime minister.<\/p>\n

Ronald Reagan, the most powerful man in the world\u2019s most powerful country for eight years (President of the United States, 1981-1989) \u2013 the man who is personally credited with humiliating the world\u2019s other superpower and who had survived an assassin\u2019s bullet in his younger days \u2013 came down with Alzheimer\u2019s at the age of 83 soon after retirement.\u00a0\u00a0 He \u201clived\u201d his last ten years the life of an infant, tended to by his loving wife and carers, oblivious to the world around him, not even knowing how to eat and dress.<\/p>\n

Ahmad Deedat, the best-known disseminator or Islam in the twentieth century, president of the Islamic Propagation\u00a0Centre International\u00a0(IPCI), spent the last nine years of his life paralyzed from the neck down after suffering a stroke, unable to speak or swallow.\u00a0 He was the author of over 20 books and countless pamphlets on Islam, millions of copies of which were distributed for free, many of which had been translated into various languages. Needless to say, millions of Muslims prayed for his recovery.\u00a0 He died in 2005.<\/p>\n

Pope John Paul II personified physical pain in the last decade of his life, having been afflicted with Parkinson\u2019s disease.\u00a0 On the other hand, many despots and dictators, who lived to ripe old age, died in relatively<\/em> good health.\u00a0 Among them, Hafez Al Assad of Syria (70 years), Joseph Stalin of Russia (75 years), Francisco Franco of Spain (82 years), and Deng Xiaoping of China (92 years).<\/p>\n

Like death, the perils of old age do not discriminate by race or religion, wealth or knowledge, power or piety.\u00a0 Neither of them distinguishes between saints and sinners.\u00a0 The wages of youth must be paid in old age, more or less, by all those who find themselves fortunate enough to live long.\u00a0 Ageing may not hit everyone with the same ferocity or brutality.\u00a0 But make no mistake, the human body is not like good wine.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t get better with age.<\/p>\n

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Old age is all wisdom but little or no dignity… Getting old was always pain, but now it is shame as well, thanks to the pace of technological change… To hear people talk about the \u201cintelligent design\u201d under these circumstances … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1088,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions\/1088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raziazmi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}