Sunday, January 31, 2010

Class Entry 01.31.10

"Denims" is a short story that made me think about the future, the very late future when I would have white hair and wrinkles, feeling like I have been through every possible thing a person could go through in a life. I started to worry about what I would be living for by that time of my life. Little children look up at the high school teenagers and wish they could go to the high school dances with the pretty dresses and suits. The freshmen look up at the seniors wishing they would be the ones who get to drive to school and look down at all the students in the school. The seniors wish they could be in college where they get to live by themselves and have their first freedom away from home. The college students wish for a job and want to get married to a perfect match for them. The married couple wishes for a cute child and saves money for a nice house. And after the children leave the house, what is left in life to do? There is a house for them to stay warm and cozy, they are too old to do any works, and the outside world seems to be for the young people to have fun. Now what? The life stops there. The break isn’t fun when it becomes a permanent break; it becomes a prison. The great fun and business of life stop at the two thirds point of our lives. What is left to do in the twenty to thirty years left of life? Some elders repeatedly say “I feel like a burden.” They might be a burden. There isn’t a place for the weak and powerless elders to stay. The romance movies mostly treat the young healthy couple in their twenties, and the theme parks are too crowded and confusing for the old people. There aren’t many funs for the elders to enjoy. The children will frown if an old grandma comes into the playground and takes their swings, and the party would be considered ruined if an old man enters slowly into the room. There needs to be a space for the elders. Thou they are slow and powerless, they were once the young energetic youth who helped the world spin. They still remember the old days when they were the ones who used to have fun and wishes the time would come back. They should be able to enjoy life just as they did when they were young, instead of looking back at the good old days. After all, we will someday become the elders who sit in their couches, dreaming about the time in their student years. I wish that by the time I become the part of the elders, I would still have a dream or goal that I would want to achieve until I die; I wish there would be a space for the elders to enjoy the rest of their lives, not a nursing home where they are treated as the patients who are weak and need help.

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