Old is Gold: What Young People Need To Know About Getting Old

I am sitting adjacent to an old lady, not as old as such, fairly old, 57 years to be exact, a caramel brown beau who’s aged gracefully with none of her strength gone. She’s wearing glasses, her black braided hair held back haphazardly by a grey scrunchie  in a shabby bun.

She cracked a book open, reading under the fading sunset light. Her lower body wrapped in a pink lesu striped with purple lines as her legs are stretched out from under her on a black mat spotted with lemon-green flowers matching the colour of her t-shirt. She’s got a book atop her knees as she bends her head supported by her right hand under her cheek. Her toes rub together as she flips a page.

Where I’m sitting, cross-legged in a blue chair clad in a pair of maroon shorts, orange sandals and a dark green shirt marked by an orange square with small black stripes in it at the front, I watch her through my purple-frame glasses.

I lift my eyes off my phone screen where I’m reading an ebook to watch her. I can’t help but contrast her life and mine. She’s happy, single and content. She’s got her life together. She’s enjoying the simple pleasures life offers by herself without a care or worry. The only difference between the both of us is age. The rest is quite the same.

As I watch her, I know it’s only a matter of time that I too will be in a place like that…happy, content…loving my life in its simple uncomplicated nature. Kids or not, you can choose to have a life filled with or without complications. That doesn’t just happen.

I have to learn from her. Ask questions and follow through with action on the guidance she gives. But mostly, watching her actions and replicating them with improvements is a much wiser option. I can have what she has and more.

Do not mock the old. The old are gold. You can learn from their past mistakes and have a better life. You can replicate their victories without having to struggle as much as they did if you’re willing to learn and submit to teaching.

The old are gold. Don’t mock the old. Learn from them if you want your life to be gold. There’s only but a matter of time, a few years really and you’ll be as old as they are. Depending on what you did with your life or what you learnt from them, what you watched them do, your life will either be much better or worse than theirs. Listen. Watch. Learn. Old is Gold.

Most of them are willing and open to teach if you are interested especially if you’re teachable. If you approach them with pride, you’ll only experience ridicule from them and live a life of regret thereafter because soon and very soon you’ll be like them. Especially as a young person, if being old is where you’re headed to, don’t you dare mock the old. In a blink of an eye, that’s going to be you.

I promise you, it doesn’t end well for the mockers, if all you did when you saw them was mock them. Things change so fast. Time flies so fast.
As you get older, (no pun intended) you will understand why the old are the way they are.

You’ll get it when you get there. Once that bridge is crossed you’ll know why your mother warned you against those late nights you wasted your youthfulness on while you were still a bubbly youth.

Don’t mock the old. It’s true, they do know a lot. For most, age is not just a number. It is a replica of wisdom accumulated over years of experience and knowledge. It’s only this younger generation where the youths think they know better.

They think (foolishly) that they must make their own mistakes first–waste a number of good years (years that would have been used for sensible progress) that could have been redeemed if only they sat down to listen to their elders–in order to succeed.

Why reinvent the wheel when there’s one you can improve and not waste all that time?

Sefora Darling