The Regalia of Old Age

So he, the regal old man, embracing his age with fragile but tight grip, lives happily as the tail-end of a great life lived. He has weathered the tempests of youth: the force of beginning, starting and acceleration! And now the path of letting it go; losing the pace slowly, gracefully, receptively. The deceleration.  Slowing down with effortless muse. To stop finally. It gives him as much excitement as the force of starting. And then the final rest. Now, during the slowing down phase, his time has become slow, the world is a small puddle around his feet. He lives like in a dream. A slow-paced one, minutes stretched like hours, days like weeks, weeks like months, months like years. In slowing down gracefully, effortlessly, he lives equal to a dozen lives lived in the beginning mode.

He enjoyed the choices which fate sieved for him. Just grabbed his share. Now he picks up and plays among those things and coarse, discarded chaff which remain unwanted above as the fine particles, much in demand, trickle below. But it’s great fun, he tells with mischievous gusto:

“In youth, we just think that life means rolling in the sieve’s fine brew. But life can be equally enjoyable among the discarded heap, little malformed grains, sand-grains, specks and chaff. Now I roll like a child in the rubble of the past, which was once waylaid by the youth’s blast. It is now the precious wealth of my old age. Mellows down the rage in this haze. There aren’t any takers for it now. So I enjoy it alone, without that competitive drone.”

The old reveller, away from the fire, cosily lying at the margin, where the faintest traces of warmth touch his old bones before moving into the cold darkness.

The majestic slow down, as important and enjoyable as the headlong thrust of the beginning, the youth. The source, the beginning, and the slowdown, and the end. A cycle. Enjoy it!