There are two sides to every situation, including life
Regular readers will be aware of The Rust‘s mission statement and purpose – i.e. watching, reviewing and analysing events in the 21st Century world from the perspective of those of us who are slightly beyond the first flush of youth.
One of the fundamental challenges of the human condition – well, indeed that of any living thing or species – is that of coming to terms with the passage of time as it impacts upon each individual.
(I just looked these up).
If you’re a mayfly, you spend up to two years under water as a larvae and then ‘hatch’ and actually live as intended for only 24 hours; common flies live about a month unless living in warmer climates; cockroaches about two years; rats one to two years; rabbits eight to twelve years; tarantulas up to twenty years; dogs fourteen years; orangutans forty years; flamingos forty years; elephants fifty years; parrots seventy years; lobsters about forty years; and giant tortoises about one hundred and fifty years.
But let’s get back to humans.
I guess the essential choice one makes – if anyone does it consciously – when (if) we reach adulthood, is whether to EITHER “carry on as normal”, pretending that one is 25 (max) forever, and from e.g. the age thirty onwards, in one form or another, seeking to fend off the ravages of time by healthy eating and exercise etc. and/or otherwise acting as if they don’t exist; OR (alternatively) accepting – even embracing – the gradual aches, pains and restrictions that the ageing process delivers … and maybe trying not to worry about them – or indeed anything in life generally – as time passes.
From a personal point of view – to the extent I have dwelt upon such issues from time to time over the decades – I suppose I have attempted to negotiate a delicate balance between seeking to live in the present (and with a view to remaining there as long as possible by judicious exercising and adopting a degree of nutritional/dietary restraint) and generally accepting that (now past my 70th birthday) I’m basically “on the way out” down a gradual but slippery slope to oblivion.
Not being a religious cove myself, I have a fairly matter-of-fact approach to the inevitabilities of life and that includes death.
I well recall comedian Ricky Gervais – an atheist – being asked by an interviewer what he would say to someone who asked what he thought he’d be doing after he died.
Gervais replied: “the same as I was doing for the billions of years before I was born …”.
Similarly, I have no particular concerns about my life as I live it now. I may feel 18 inside … well okay, 28 maximum … but I know that whenever I look in the shaving mirror, or go anywhere in public, everyone else takes me for what I appear to be, viz. an ancient old geezer shuffling along the pavement, most probably wondering to himself where the hell he had earlier originally set off to go to … and why.
Still, that brings me to the thought that prompted me to blog today.
We senior citizens sometimes don’t help ourselves – or our cause generally – by some of the ways we go about things.
One of my biggest bug-bears and frustrations is the performance of old people when they’re out shopping (and yes, I do acknowledge that I’m probably as bad as everyone else in this respect!).
If I ever have to stand in a queue of three or four shoppers at a supermarket check-out again, at which some old biddy – or elderly gent in a flat cap – is standing beyond the cash till looking – as Johnny Rotten used to declaim in a well-known ditty from the 1970s – (“Pretty Vacant”) without yet having put a single item in a bag and/or shopping trolley … I shall take out my Lone Ranger Colt 45 cap-gun revolver and shoot myself.
This type of individual then smiles at the cashier before taking at least five minutes to load his/her purchases into a series of bag one-by-one, then another three searching in their bag or wallet for “tokens”, a “Tesco’s loyalty card and/or some money and/or a credit card – meanwhile those of us in the queue behind – who have jobs, wives, mistresses and/or lives to resume as soon as they can jump into their car and get “on their way” – are gradually losing the will to live.
Old people like that “shopper type” I refer to above just should not be allowed out. They’re a danger and an annoyance to the world at large, including themselves.
I honestly believe that anyone who has the good fortune to reach “three score years and ten” should then be given “five years grace” and after that be assessed annually to assess whether or not they shouldn’t be in a “home” for the general benefit of the nation.
Over the course of my life I estimate that I’ve wasted at least eight years of my life (that I’ll never get back) behind elderly people clogging up queues and pavements.
Enough I say!
