The Meaning and Meaninglessness of Getting Old!

Recently, I have been thinking about how to keep working until I’m 100 years old. I always write for this column without hesitation or restraint because this is where I write about my dreams while sleep-talking. Therefore, I don’t care if people laugh at me for saying that I want to live or work to be 100 years old or not. I will write about what I want to my heart’s content.

I wrote that I would work hard until I live to be 100 years old, but as I started to think more about it, two thoughts crossed my mind. One is longevity oriented: I want to live long enough to see the world end. The other is a kind of ultimate existentialism: I have no regrets even if I die today because I always do my best! Both are probably my true feelings.

However, it’s not that I’m not afraid of getting old. We have many obstacles in our lives that are out of our control. I think that this is what aging means. The biggest problem is physical aging and the deterioration of cells. In particular, you notice your stiff muscles more so it’s important to exercise and take good care of your body so you don’t lose your muscle definition over time. I feel the tension in my body when I get up from bed every morning and I can’t easily stand up without springing out of the seat after sitting in a car for an hour because my legs and back get tight. I wonder if this is all part of the aging process that occurs slowly every day.

I often hear that people become wiser as they grow older, but I sometimes wonder if this is true. If anything, people tend to refuse to change and assert that it is better to live as they see fit, so as a result, they make the same mistakes over and over again in their lives. I often encounter situations where I find myself thinking that way. If we do not become wiser as we age, or even reflect on things we have done in the past, then what are we living for?

To sum it all up, as the Book of Ecclesiastes says, the best thing for us as people is to eat good food every day and be thankful for what we have. If you can also get a good night’s sleep, then you are living the best life possible. I can’t help but think how that way of thinking is so spot on these days. However, when I look back on my life, I find that working until midnight and sacrificing my sleeping time maybe hasn’t been so good for me after all. Staying up late leads to more shallow sleep. Since I have a habit of only sleeping for a short time, the next day I wind up not feeling like I really slept when I wake up in the morning. I am so sleepy during the daytime, but I don’t have time to take naps. Does this habit make my body even more stiff? This means that I haven’t learned anything even though I’m only getting older. I know the secret to living the best life, but I’m ignoring it. Furthermore, I quickly shovel my noodles into my mouth at the stand-up soba shop every day because I don’t want to spare some time to eat properly. It’s hard for me to explain this contradiction, and I find myself struggling with the back and forth in my mind.

What does growing old mean to me? If I never learn anything and my body just becomes more and more decrepit, aging seems meaningless to me. If that’s the case, then growing old merely means that the end of time is creeping up closer every second. This thought is empty because the basic premise of life is that there is a beginning and an end, and that there is a limited period of time in between. The time will come someday when, after a good sleep, we will never wake up.

In short, not everything in life is about worrying or thinking about the small things, but to enjoy eating and drinking every day and live with gratitude. We should also work hard to eat, too. The Book of Ecclesiastes by King Solomon is full of these life lessons that are truly filled with words of wisdom and life’s aphorisms.