Aging Gracefully

My cat who is wiser than me

When I was a boy I used to think that anyone who hit the age of 30 was middle-aged and anyone whose hairline showed shades of grey was antique. Maybe that’s why I refused to grow up. When I hit 30 I continued to behave as if I was 18 and now that I have no black hair left on my pate I behave as if I was 30. 

My school closed today for the summer break. My students met me personally to wish me “Happy Holiday” and some of them threatened to visit me at my residence during the break. I felt like 18 once again.

What people call maturity is something I never learnt. I think I was incapable of learning it. I think the child in me is hyperactive. I love to play with my cat like a little boy until the cat gets bored of the game. I feel sad when he is bored. Even the cat thinks I’m too silly at times.

I cannot grow up, I’m pretty sure. I have always been immature, quite silly by the world’s normal standards. Do people change really as they grow up? I wondered. The behaviour of my students today, the last day of school, made me ask that question. The tear drops that welled up in the eyes of one student (an exceptional case, no doubt) made me shudder. Have I gone wrong somewhere, I wondered.

I failed to grow up, I consoled myself. Do people really grow up? Isn’t it rather about certain genetic makeup? Or is it about learning to play certain games?

Did Mark Antony grow up? Did Cleopatra? What about Othello or Hamlet? Tragedy is the grand finale for those who fail to grow up. And those who really grow up belong to fiction only, I think. Woody Allen's kind of fiction, not Shakespeare's. The real characters remain what they are. Some facades are added on the way to make the character look good, better than the original. Adding those facades is what growing up gracefully is about. Isn’t it?