Yours Sincerely ( Y S ) read an article that partitions life into Birth, Puberty, Coming of Age, School Graduation, Career, Marriage, Midlife, Retirement and Death. Being a retiree, this division of life is very daunting. Retirement being so near to death. Unacceptable and unbelievable!The father-in-law of a colleague of Y S outlived two wives and his retirement life was way longer than his 32 years of working life. He died at 103 !!! The Pension Department " Si pun si loor" / loses like mad paying out his pension !!! He did not die of any diseases but he simply expired in his sleep.
On the contrary, a friend sent Y S the above picture of life in various bottles. Well, Y S is beyond the Coke bottle and fluctuating between the Whiskey and Mineral Water bottle. Well, this is more acceptable. Y S' earnest prayer is to skip the Drip bottle and go straight to the Maker if He so granted. Many kiths and kins skipped the Whikey and Mineral Water bottles and landed with the Drip bottle before they went back to the Maker. No chance at living out their retirement and golden years. How unfortunate!
Many more do not even get to enjoy the Whiskey bottle or to think about it. They are too busy saving and saving for the Drip bottle which according to them is inevitable in old age and could be very expensive.
Is life worth living if one only keeps thinking and be bugged by the Drip bottle. A common saying among the Hokkien Chinese, " O, siew choe lau pun" meaning to say, " O, I'm saving for my old age capital " that is to pay the doctor's bills. So pathetic. Does life move in the procession of the bottles??? Does old age necessarily bring along diseases and sicknesses???
Y S dreads to think of the long list of sicknesses that doctors attached to ageing.
Until that day.................................,
let's live as if this were the first day we had ever seen and the last we were going to see.
Let 's live rich rather than to die rich.
Let's endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Let's live our lives and don't let our lives live us.
Let's begin at once to live, and count each day day as a separate life.
Let's live our lives as exclamations and no explanation.
And let's NOT for the sake of getting a living forget to live.
"Life" is a 4-lettered word : "G O O D."
6 comments:
LOL! Good one! I like the drip bottle part. So many of us do that! In the end, life becomes one long unending chase at the expense of the could be(s)...
Hi Tom,
I'm retired too. And I guess many of us in retirement have thoughts along that line of 'extinction'. But why dwell on it? It'll come, like it or not. :-) So just as those lines at the end of the post says -- let's make it a good life. Live it good one day at a time. :-)
AJ 7 & Ellen, both of u r right. Let's live and continue living.
In ancient time, there are no drip bottles to put fear into our thoughts!
Hi Thomas:)
This is a very interesting post in the sense that most of us are concerned about our old age, sickness and death.You have give some solutions for a happy living.
It is not that all people are blessed with good health and sufficient money in their old age.All their life they struggle to make both ends meet,support a family, give good education for their children etc.As a result they don't have sufficient savings in their old age even to live a decent life.Grown up children earning well desert them without realising that it is the parents who helped them to stand on their feet. On the other hand the children blame their parents for silly things and thus absolve themselves from all responsibility towards their old parents.
I have seen an old man begging on the road because his rich children are not prepared to help him.I have seen an old mother and father begging on the road because their children are not well off to support them. I myself sometimes buy a breakfast or lunch or give some some money to an old man and his wife because he is not healthy to world and all his children have left him.
Yes, money gives security whether it is spent on drips or drinks. It gives independence and s sense of dignity and confidence to old people because they don't have to depend on their children or anybody else.
Your wise words are really wonderful and need careful study and thought because we have only one life and we have to live it to the best of our ability, without any regrets.Death is inevitable whether a person is rich or poor.
I still remember the poem which I studied in school-DEATH THE LEVELER:
Sceptre and crown must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made,
With the scythe and spade.
Best wishes:)
Joseph
Very touching comment.Thanks Joe. Well said. Let's live on.
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