Sunday, March 11, 2007

Staying Healthy When Old

One thing I notice when I am on my usual morning walks is that the ones who are religiously exercising are the older generation. Even their numbers are more than the younger generation. There are teenagers and the young adults, but they usually come to socialize more than actually exercise. They will run a few hundred feet and then end up running around the trees chasing each other.

Whereas the older generation, made up of the healthy to the sickly, are very serious about the whole ‘keeping healthy’ workout. We always take our health for granted when we are young or when in the pink of health. When something happens to wake us up from our stupor, then we start to prioritise our activities and manage to make time for exercise and other health related activities.

I can see so many elderly people who have survived heart attacks or strokes and who are regularly exercising to stay healthy. When we start losing that precious commodity that was given freely at birth, we try to work hard to keep it as long as we can. Growing old gracefully was probably coined for greeting cards. There is no ‘gracefully’ with old age. You lose your strength, your stability, your reflexes, your memory, sometimes your sense of humour and probably have a lot of gas as well.

What you really need is to be healthy with strong muscles and limbs to carry your body around. For the mental workout, reading is about the best exercise. Otherwise you would end up being a burden to those whom you love. What I have noticed is that no one wants to die before their time. And those who are surviving, staying healthy and strong seems to be the priority. Life after death is another story.

3 comments:

David BC Tan said...

haha. "no one wants to die before their time" which obviously is difficult to qualify (or quantify)

Siva said...

The inference to time of death here was meant when you are actually on the death bed and you know your time has come as opposed to when you are still alive and kicking. All other incidents like accidental death are not taken into account as that is out of our hands.

Siva said...

Very true estee. When I was still working, I was waiting for my driver at a bus stop when I heard a voice calling 'pakcik' from behind me. It never occured to me that that young girl was addressing me! If she had said 'abang', my head would have swirled around in a jiffy. That day I was brought to my senses that I have reached the 'pakcik' age!

Right now I am still happy no one has started calling me 'tok'! heh heh.