Monday, June 4, 2007

Old age and chatter

In general, kids have many friends. Teens have lots of friends. Youths have some friends. Adults have few friends. Elderly people have very few friends. That's probably caused many elderly people tends to chatter a lot including to strangers. Kids are at times innocent and enjoy befriending with other kids. Nowadays when one grows older, suspicions and fears pile up. Privacy also demands more space within our lives taking out the innocence and at the same time, friends. Old men/ women might have lost many of its few arsenal of friends which tend to give them loneliness. On the other hand, as their mental state tends to switch back to children's mentality, they might become less suspicious of people. At the end, they talk and spare their lifetime stories to even total strangers.

I feel great sympathy to these elderly and am wondering whether I'd end up like them since I enjoy talking hahaha... but ah well, in Singapore I usually end up listening to aunties talking some alien languages I don't know. So, I end up smiling and nodding my head all the time hehehe... rarely, they'd notice that and I am scolded. Hehe.. but well, it should still be better than avoiding them.

I've seen a lot of people avoiding these old men/ women including those claiming themselves to be religious. Frankly, I implore us all to think about what will make them to chatter. Perhaps we might want to consider that we might end up like them one day. We can't control what we'll end up like at old age anyways. Furthermore, perhaps we will be able to learn something from their experiences told in the stories. And perhaps, deep down in our hearts, we might actually identify with their loneliness and our avoiding them is just our effort to prevent ourselves from getting in touch with our own loneliness as well. Loneliness comes in many form. Think about that.

2 comments:

Where Nobody Knows My Name said...

I don't have a lot of friends. I always put family first. No regrets there. Now I am in-between. I care for teenagers and elderly parents. I still don't have time for friends but I still have no regrets.

Andiyanto said...

Glad to hear about you having no regrets. I do think that the teenagers and the elderly parents you care for, are your real friends. Perhaps they might be even truer friends than what other people have :)