百歳の人生, Hyakusai no jinsei, The 100-year-old life.
I woke up today ready to go to work until an emergency came up and I had to take the day off. Taking a cup of coffee as I check my journal for any agenda needing my attention, I noticed that it'll be my birthday next week. Then, it got me thinking of my age. I always say it’s just a number, right? … right?
It’s just s number until I think of how many years I need to go to work, how many meals I have to eat, how many steps I need to walk, how many stages in life I have to go through, how many years I need to live.
Will I have the willpower, financial capacity, and physical power to do keep living until I don't?
It’s been said that with the advancement of medical science, people will be living for up to 100 years old.
In Japan, statistics show that there are more elder people than the working-age group. What we pay now in pension premiums is being paid to current pensionaries. As part of the working-age group, we worry that when it’s our time to enjoy the fruits of our labor, there would be even more elder people than working people that the government won’t have enough funding to pay us by that time.
Even in the rest of the world, even though the worldwide life expectancy is at 70-80 years old, we see a surge of elder people living past 90.
That got me thinking, would you really rely on medical science, caregiving facilities, and healthy living, just to live up to a 100-years-old?
My short answer is No unless I'm a 100 year-older kicking ass.
Being called "centenarian" sounds cool until you can't stand on your own, walk on your own, eat on your own, or care for yourself. But with a longer life comes a longer working/career life. At least in Japan, I read on the news that there are talks for companies to rehire retired employees as temp staff or part-time employees.
Truth be told, I'm not someone to keep a job for too long; the maximum would be 2 years. One, because I always end up in a job that I don't connect with but I can't just let go and two, I'm a coward who's always second-guessing whenever I had the chance to go for the job that I wanna do. With that and all, I don't see myself ever be staying in a company for the longest of time.
I haven't even talked about getting old itself.
Deciding to throw away the life I know and uproot myself to Japan, I'm also on the duty to keep in touch with my mother. She is a lovely, lively 50s-year-old woman but every time we video call, she would complain about the minor, maybe major, pains in her body. How she might be menopausing, how her neck aches when she sleeps on a hard surface or how she needs to replace her glasses and her dentures.
It's annoying to hear them all the time but it's natural and comes with age. THAT is getting old. My 50s-year-old mother is still on the younger side of life but from now on, it will be agonizing years of slowly noticing the aches she's feeling, the changes in her body.
The time will come that I will experience these things. I'm a girl scout and likes to overprepare but also there are times that I like to let nature weave its own thread. なるようになる, Naru you ni naru, Whatever will be, will be or in my religious mother's words, in God's will.
The stairwell of life we have today is until around 80 steps, others are given the chance to go up until 100 steps. For what purpose? To just see life flow in front of them? To see the world around them evolve? Or to just see how long humans can go?
I don't really see for myself a reason to be living this long. I'll see how long life will take me but I have told my family and my husbando that if ever I got a disease with a 50-50 chance of surviving, I'd like to stop at that and take my chance. I don't want to be a crippling old hag bedridden in her 80s. By that time, I think I may have lived my life just the way I wanted.
As many would say, I'd like to end on a high note.
This article turned out to be half-objective, half-philosophical than I wanted it to be. Honestly, I just wanna indulge myself and the thoughts inside my head when I woke up today. I did not mean to offend any beliefs or lifestyle but if you did, I apologize but please enlighten me of your thoughts, too.
Let's be clear though. I am not saying old people should stay... old. I have known older people who live their lives as if they're still in their twenties. Let people live how they want to live. It just got me thinking if given a choice, would I press "continue" if I was prompted with the question,
"Do you want to go to the next stage in life?".
Lead image by Tiago Muraro on Unsplash
I'm crimsonowl, an artist in progress trying to make a living out of art, an NFT artist-creator, a crypto blogger talking about anime. art and everything in between - just a Random girl in the blockchain.
Article 15, September 27, 2021 - Creativity is contagious, pass it on. Albert Einstein
what I would love is just to give as much as I have with my loved ones.