Rezori | On growing old (and I should know)

The statistics have become predictable, almost tedious, but they're hard to ignore. More and more of us old folks are coming on stream each year with the dire prediction that we're going to clog up the system with our ailing and failing dispositions. Specific figures are really no longer necessary. The whole terrifying tsunami of baby boomers cresting in the shallows of retirement can be summed up in two words.

TOO MANY.

If that doesn't scare you, maybe adding another word will do the trick.

FAR TOO MANY.

We've been made out to be the new enemy, the double-crossers who'll destroy the very system we created. The picture that's being painted is that all our working lives we financed dreams far too rich for the measly taxes we agreed to have deducted from our pay checks. Now we're backing out even more by downsizing our contributions to pension-sized bagatelles.

Our demand for quality of life without the natural aches and pains of aging is going to bankrupt the public health system, yet we still want a break in every place where we no longer feel like paying the full price.

In Olde Ireland folks like us would be parked in the western room of the house, there to watch the sun set every night as a reminder of things to come. According to what you see in TV reality shows, the only spot from which today's senior is willing to watch the sun set is from the deck of a luxury liner.

I think a bit of understanding is in order. We didn't ask to be born into this age which allegedly misguided us with such unprecedented prosperity. The communists got their utopia wrong, what made us think that ours was going to be any more sustainable?

So we set high standards. Isn't that what we were supposed to do considering the countless messes previous generations got themselves into by accepting low standards? And yes, we have neither the power nor the energy left to finish many of the jobs we took on.

The point is, we have more important business to attend to now. The business of our exit.

The not-so-joyful parts of aging

There's the physical part of it. The creaking joints and constantly complaining muscles. The more and more frequent and completely unprovoked moments when you catch yourself drooling. The ringing in the ears. The progressive sagging in all kinds of places. The indignity that you, too, are shrinking into one of those wrinkled and stooped creatures you used to treat practically as aliens when you were young.

And then there's what aging does to your mind, how it changes your very experience of time. What was once a permanent landscape built on solid structures like hours, days, weeks, months, and years is starting to melt into one big slop of here and now.

Of the five primary questions (what, where, when, how, why) the first four seem less and less important each time another birthday rolls around. Increasingly they're simply reminders of how little you care because the answers to them all seem the same. What used to surprise and inform you is starting to feel more and more like just another version of the dozen or so themes to which you've been marching and sometimes dancing most of your life.

Only the question 'why?' refuses to fade. If anything it's becoming more persistent, like the ringing in your ears. It's as if you're preparing to take it with you because it might come in handy on the other side.

So never mind what our retirement means for already shaky health care systems and pension funds. Consider rather what a great contribution it will be to the world's collective consciousness to have so many peoplemore than ever before in human historyall focusing on the queen of all questions.

WHY?