Senility and Sensibility

Senility and sensibility

After a long time, I had the chance to meet my grandmother. She is 90 years old, still walking around a bit, with a walking stick for help, and taking of her bare necessities. I keep quipping to her that in terms of health, she is better compared to her five daughters, all aged between 55 and 74 ( my mother is third in the pecking order), and of course, that these five siblings are comparatively better off in terms of health compared to the next generation ( including yours truly), and so on.

This is no secret. The older generations did a lot of hard physical work, ate and slept well, and kept their wants and needs to be minimum ( most probably out of lack of choice), and given their lifestyle in the villages, naturally tended to have better health than the corresponding generations. But one thing that struck me on the head was – it was not just the physical toughness that kept them going. They were mental martinets. They had the ability to face adversity and stand up to it in all confidence and composure. The biggest bane of the current generation (and worsening through into the next) is that most of lack the mental tenacity to face up to the rough when the situation demands. Most of us tend to wilt. This lack of psychological stamina also tells upon the physical health, big time. This is why you find people popping pills at the drop of a hat for the smallest nag, or rush to a doctor for the slightest rise in the body temperature. “Don’t take headaches lightly” – goes our mental conditioning.

When it comes to GenNext, they are even more unfortunate, in that they neither get to see their parents display that tenacity required to face the vicissitudes of life with equanimity, nor their grand parents in action – most of us, after all, have adopted the Nuclear family as the de-facto lifestyle model, thus depriving the children of the warmth and moral support of the grandparents.

My grandma, in the meanwhile, looks at me, with ever fading eyesight, and murmurs faintly “I do not know how long God wants me to undergo this torture. I have been suffering from severe pain all over the body, am finding it increasingly difficult to live… when will God take me back?” … clearly one of those moments in life when one does not know how to react….