To live that little more.
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Septuagenarians and octogenarians whose latent desire to live some more is so palpable that when they nervously celebrate another birthday or keep shaving off a couple of years of their age in conversations is saddening and amusing at the same time. The dejection with which they mentioned their age and doubts about more life while zealously taking care of their bodies taking to new food fads with an alacrity that would put millennials to shame or avoiding unhealthy with a barge pole is amusing. Anointing their aged bodies with all three streams of medicine, doctors are visited regularly on the slightest of pretexts or running to nature cure health joints at every opportunity no stone is left unturned in the quest for that few years more.
The retired with an hollow existence of eating and sleeping devouring both with insatiable appetite many a times refusing even a bit of productivity or the ill where more grams of medicine is consumed than food, even the bed ridden for life with the life narrowed down to a claustrophobic existence bereft of movements and meaning all clinging on to life unwilling to loosen their tenacious hold even for a bit lest death comes calling.
It’s been a habit of the Hindu elders blessing the corresponding generations to live to be a hundred. Is it a wish or a subconscious desire expressed surreptitiously. It’s been always about living long, the blessings wishes. The benedictions invariably are about a long life rather than a beautiful life a purposeful life. Money and greatness come a distant second in minds obsessed with longevity. For eternity every human effort in medicine and science all untiring in the quest for that extra few years to immortality is desperate. The survival instinct most vibrant in us in all of animal kingdom.
The propensity of the animal kingdom when the end is imminent is tired as well as graceful. They are born they peak then eventually they die. They know when the end has come giving up on life. Retiring to obscure corners waiting for the inevitable. The acceptance is grim to the human mind but very well within nature’s sensibilities.
The humans on the other hand more evolved than the rest of species put together refuse to call it quits. Gracefully that is. Billions spent on research and development trying to invent that something which will give a new lease of life or a couple of years more depending on the seriousness of the ails greedily feeding on the humans frenzied refusal to call it quits.
The love respect and societal norms so strong that a child is expected to spend an indiscriminate amount of money just to give a parent some more years of ailing existence sometimes to the extent of putting his or her spouse and children in financial jeopardy. Same goes for the parent whose love for the child is always more than the child’s love for them wants to and is supposed to spend on a severely or terminally ill child for that one more chance. Gambling away financial security towards an uncertain future. There is willingness and hesitancy wherever money is spent and I leave it at that and lack of will on either side is condemned at every turn and opportunity.
Bristling with indignation after reading this the 70 plus will ask and rightly so my grudges against a basic human trait. After a lifetime spent working fulfilling responsibilities don’t they have a right to curl up with a good book or just do nothing? What’s is the big deal in wanting to live a few years more. Absolutely none I say some soothing balm on raw nerves is called for here. Why should it be anyone’s business for objecting to personal desires. It shouldn’t the whole point which I have tried to put across is why can’t we come to terms with impending end. It is the fright and desperacy against meeting the maker that had me thinking. Why can’t we rejoice death as we celebrate birth? Too radical? Perhaps but isn’t death a harsh reality towards which we run with dead pun intended certainty the minute we step into this world. A life well lived which embraces the end with dignity smiling and sated and at peace with what was dealt. Instead of the statement invariably made by older people- Who knows how many more years do we have now- dejectedly, why it be something else positive.
I am a year shy of fifty suffering from an undetected disease that might or might not let me live too long. Wasting away with aggressive regularity I have made peace with my life. To live more live less holds no importance to me all I wish for is a dignified end.
Why can’t we look at death as beginning of a new journey rather than the end of an existing.
Till the next one.
Veeru.
