People watching as we age

Everywhere people are talking about themselves, discussing their doings, their loves, their fighting, their poems, their goals, their music, their meeting their movies, their millions, their misfortunes—their celebrity (or notoriety) is so vast, so clamorous, so exasperating…it suffocates, obsesses us in a way.

I am a bore when I report what bores others—as some interviews show. We used to love them, we used to look up to them as if they were angels, there for us in political economic, or religious reason—until despair,unpredictable, intractability came because it isn’t so.

When everything happened and it can go from bad to worse, can it ever get better—even a bit? No one stands a chance, not with the ferocity and desperation. They shield themselves with cynicism  talent for manipulating politics and lack of ideals. These are the politicians who have profoundly influenced the nation’s thoughts and policies.

If popularity can be measured  by screaming women, battered people, upturned chairs—collective madness monstrous scene of amorous cannibalism—without a shadow of a doubt, movie people are here to stay.

To interview then without being pushed about, suffocated, crushed, probably belongs to  my medieval era, when I met  brute Mohammad  Ali, Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Marlon Brando and Richard Burton (when he starred in Camelot in Broadway oh so long ago) whom I have all outlived—whom I have all outlived.

And what of the breed that don’t need preachers and crosses, men filled with hate—those who cant stay neutral—those takes a stand on one side or the other without mixing colors or ideas. Where integration was impossible, only hate matters. Any help is superfluous.

Schadenfreude never felt so good.

There’s the corporate  greed, left untalked about because, it’s simply there, like writings on the wall or the elephant in the room announcing itself.

Then, you see the survivors, the bravest of hearts. Their stories done best by memoirists, forthcoming in a message to a world that can use a glimmer of hope and those who won’t allow their happiness and success be poisoned by insults. Yet they have no regrets because they are capable of gratitude, can see the good, never took anything for granted and knew how to say “thanks.”

But more than that, there are those who don’t regret the loss of their youth.

Didn’t Eugene O’Neill say that getting old is a natural thing? And no one must not be afraid of the natural. Trees age.  Animals and everything that is alive—all of us—must age.

I am not even afraid to look old. I’ll never get really old, because I don’t know indifference and I ignore bitterness. If something unpleasant happens to me, I put it behind me and I keep telling myself that tomorrow is another day, which is good for the wrinkles, too.

Isn’t it fortunate that we can age as we see everything around us?  If I am aging, it means that I did not die young..

***

E-mail Mylah at [email protected]

The Filipino-American Community Newspaper. Your News. Your Community. Your Journal. Since 1991.

Copyright © 1991-2024 Asian Journal Media Group.
All Rights Reserved.