Time changes everything and everyone.
The older we age, the more we (and everything around us) also change.
Take birthdays, which we all look forward to, but not the same way.
As a growing grandpa with a grand-daughter and grandsons at home and abroad, I find
myself now counting birthdays at a rate too-fast for me.
I also have generational friends who see the accelerated frequency of our birthdays as
a sort of Last Lap to the end of the line.
Many approaching 70 attach mortal connotations to the biblically ordained ‘three-score-
and-ten’ age limit, most going to deadly extremes to put their houses in inheritance
order before kicking the invisible bucket.
Some over-70s simply Thank God for Long Life – and start counting their days as the
body starts to stop being its old self.
Approaching 80, some set personal lifetime achievement goals and share untold
stories, others simply ignoring the multifarious vicissitudes of aging, living in denial of
known consequences, even refusing to try to live longer.
Some who reach 90 either aim to score a century, or consider themselves in Life’s
Departure Lounge, awaiting the Final Boarding Call.
At 100, centenarians are celebrated, with the usual question from one-and-all being:
“What’s the secret behind your long life?”
But back to aging…
We treat ourselves according to how we see age and aging, accepting life’s just A
Passage on Planet Earth, but not knowing when we’ll use our non-expiring one-way
ticket for that final flight.
We treat life as it comes, caring (or caring-not) that Life Is What We Make It; and we live
it like we see it — even like we own it.
Some are born rich, but we all share the same richness of life that allows us to make it
whatever we want to.
But there’s no guarantee Lady Luck will heap smiles on us until Thy Kingdom Come.
Me?
Born just after the first half of the first decade of the second half of the last century, I’ve
been around long-enough to know it’s an honour to age gracefully, witnessing the world
across multiple generations, between centuries.
Still very-much-here at the end of the first quarter of Century 21, I consider myself
among those Born At The Right Time.
I’ve seen the world turn and change: from the age of the start of the space race to plans
for colonizing on Mars; from writing on a slate to fingering keyboards for most of my
day; from hearing tales from my dad about World War II, to seeing World War III
unfolding in different places and times in Century 21; from listening to Test Cricket
matches on radio to watching Olympic Games live online; from needing a bag of tools
for my reporting assignments to seeing IT and AI adjust the art of journalism to a system
of using gadgets to generate clicks; from reading about robots as healthy science fiction
to actually seeing them do what the humans who made them can’t.
My Old Mariner dad’s eternal rhyme was that all his sons, born with sea water in their
veins, must ‘Go to sea to see where to go’ (in life) affording me the rare luxurious
fortune of sailing and flying around the world before I was 20.
Today, I still look forward to every birthday as an achievement, but one that comes too
fast.
I no longer party like before, but I do find ways to enjoy each, even if in the solemnity of
the castle in my skin.
But one of my Birthday Kicks every May is the apparent mystery (to many) of my actual
birthday.
Thanks to an input mistake by my first grand-daughter when she decided to create a
Facebook account for me, I get calls and online messages from all-around-the-world
every May 9, wishing me ‘Happy Birthday’.
But every time I tell a well-meaning greeter it’s not my birthday, they reply with words
like: ‘But that’s what Facebook says…’
Same with my friend and fellow writer Claudius Francis, who lists me every year among
persons he congratulates for their birthday on May 9, again thanks to Facebook.
The funny thing is that when I tell innocently-misled greeters it’s the wrong date, they
don’t even ask ‘So, when?’ — only telling me: ‘But it’s on Facebook!’
So, when’s my birthday?
Actually, I’ll be 69 in a couple days’ time and I was looking-forward to it so-much, that
last year I actually (admittedly mistakenly) told many people I was that-old — until my
then 90-year-old mum upbraided me for ‘losing’ my memory before her.
However, this is my 69th year on our shared planet and it’s quite interesting that many
friends (older and younger) seem to think about our 69th birthday more in terms of it
being the only God-given occasion for a once-in-a-lifetime topsy-turvy birthday.
A friend abroad from the World of Words told me: “The most-sexiest age is 69!’
I replied: “It’s always the same up-side-down, but I also plan to turn it back-to-front –
age-wise…”
His response: “At 96 and feel like 69 will be a tremendous feat, but just remember to
notify Pfizer!”
See what I mean?
Honestly folks, my actual birth date is a two-digit number in the first half of May.
But since I don’t want any of my present and future grandchildren to try to list me online
in the World Birthday List, I prefer to let life be as-is and continue spending my birthdays
as I please.
However, for Good Manners, all I’ll say is: I was born at a right time — the same time in
different years — as a string of revolutionaries, stretching from Ho Chi Minh to Malcolm
X.
And as far as I can see, this year will be just-another-one as I continue chalking-up and
growing younger.
After all, I’m not among those Living To Die, if only because I have no appointment for
that ultimate hopefully heavenly assignment.