For those who reached the 60 year-old threshold and has been legally acknowledged as senior citizen, it is actually an entry into a different “world.” It could be a world of medication, a world of disability, a world of discount, a world of vulnerability or perhaps a world where inhabitants are ignored. For exactly a decade more, I have circumnavigated the twilight zone.
Sometime ago, I was very excited to reach 60 because by then I could file early retirement and enjoy life with out being subjected to rules. I thought grandly that I have received freedom providentially. I could go places, venture the unknown, and explore everything I failed to undergo. With lumpsum, accumulated allowances and pension, I had everything to splurge and enjoy.
But that was not the case. I realized that I was not in USA or in Europe. I am still in the Philippines and it means that notwithstanding basic fund within my reach, life of comfort is still wanting. I would rather spend a good meal on all days in a week than buy an admission ticket to a concert. Inflation and economic woes further reduced life consigned on welfare, like ordinary Filipinos; it was surely a struggling lifestyle if you may.
Well let’s forget politics for a while get down to the physical brasstacks. Every morning is spent in stretching since sleeping contributed not only to cramps and mucous disposal but on catching up breath and determining what to cook as meal. Days, weeks and months are shorter as each period is defined by a specific ageing symptoms. One day, there is dizzyness, indigestion and constipation the next, cardiac palpitation; another week passes by the rate of blood pressure is high, vision hazy and even the sense of hearing and touch too dull to promote awareness. This goes on, until one day, poor senior citizen, his stomach not only a warehouse of various medicines but a repository of different chemicals outsmarting one another to give him the best result.
No wonder it is called senior moments because it is all what is left of life, only moments.
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