glowing old

yup, glowing old and not growing old...

i have always been advocating growing old graciously. cos i believe that youth, external beauty and all things associated is impermanent. that is the law of nature. everything and everyone will grow old with time. there is no escape. but i strongly believe that we can grow old graciously. and when we do so, we will naturally glow with age! and i reiterate here again after coming face-to-face with a few rather disturbing experiences recently.

firstly, i have a friend who is petrified of getting and looking old. never never ever mention the "o" word to this friend of mine. and no, it is not "orgasm". i would be very happy if it was orgasm... but that is besides the point. the "o" word to this friend is "old". and probably to this person, it signifies weakness, loneliness, whatever... and so, to not look her age (ya, i am not even saying, looking like a teenager), this friend would go for botox treatment every few months. need to keep the young look, she maintained. and i was thinking... hmmm, if at 30, i want to continue to look 30, i go for botox and manage to do so... and at 35, i still want to look 30, and at 40, i still want to look 30... imagine the impossibility of such desires. what's most important is to look healthy! no?

and talking about looking healthy, this friend of mine, and many other gay friends too, have been trying hard to look thin. and thankfully, they have not gone to the point to want to look pencil thin. but really, i personally think older people should focus on looking and staying healthy rather than thin and/ or losing weight. the thing with the human body is that as we get on with age, our body will shrink (in part due to loss of muscle mass). and when this happen, we will begin to look a little saggy. after all, our size is like our clothes. once we lose our mass, it becomes oversize. and so, if we still force ourselves to be as thin as we can, we will end up looking very "saggy" and haggard. but on the other hand, if we focus on being healthy and not be too bothered about the little bits of padding all round, we can glow like santa claus. and i seriously think nature has bestowed this on us cos as we grow older, we naturally will look a little fatter cos our metabolic rate will drop. no? haha... also, think of this, ever see a healthy dried prune? yup, you should get the point.

and lastly, i wanna write about someone i know. he was (and still is) a reasonably handsome person. straight, and very successful in his career. he is in the airline industry and used to have a to-die-for happy family that was the envy of many people. but alas, due to his expressed desire to stay young and want to be forever young, he end up exchanging his family for his desires. his family is now broken. he had divorced his wife. his children have been placed under his wife's custody and they moved out of his house a couple of years ago. i can only suspect it was a direct result of his desire to maintain and prove his virility and youth for he has always shared that he is afraid of growing old. and even while he was married, he continued to led a carefree lifestyle with young women and engaging in dangerous sports. he is now pushing 50 (or perhaps already in his 50s), and still live a lifestyle of a swinging bachelor. he has a girlfriend, goes around public places wearing a straw hat, loose singlet and berms. and he strums his guitar and sings old songs too. he reminds me of a hippy in the swinging 70s. i saw him recently and he told me he is having a bad bout of flu, yet he planned to head off to thailand to wind-surf and to have fun. and in his own words "if i don't play now, i will not be able to play once i get old"...

while i celebrate their strong conviction to youth and the efforts, i also feel a little tinge of sadness for them. it seemed like they have allowed their desires to stay and look young consume them without them realizing it. desires... sighs... i can only wish them peace of mind when the time comes for them to reconcile the fact that they need to eat sleep shit their age. in short, live their age.

ok, enough of the rantings... i need to go do up my face now...

hmmm... where's my sk ii mask?

lol!

ps: have posted the song titled "forever young" by alphaville above. it was a superbly popular song in the '80s and was banned in some countries. accordingly, some people were reported to have committed suicide after getting so hooked onto this song and didn't want to grow old...