Age is a bit
like wine: it accentuates the essences. In the same way that maturation enhances the
personality of the wine, age accentuates the personality traits. The virtues and the flaws seem to increase: who is good
becomes better, but
who is bad, becomes worse.
The goal of years, although not always clear, is to make us better
people. People capable of
overcoming flaws, hurts, grudges, sorrows and mistakes. People
capable of learning from the pains
and losses and transforming ways, not always easy ways, into
kindness.
This learning is visible
in some people who are in the third or fourth age, who have reached their inner balance and show a natural
propensity for serenity and
well-being. People with an easy smile, who cultivate kindness and the respect for others.
They keep on using words that are
becoming less used with every passing day: please, thank you, excuse me. They are
the remnants of a distant education, when
the starting point for any
relationship - even the most
superficial - was
the recognition that our freedom
exists only if we respect the other’s freedom. A
principle that shows us how we
are all interconnected by an invisible
umbilical cord.
These
people are from a time when we lived more
slowly, and everything had a more
intense flavor. From a time full of small elegant gestures: holding a door for a woman to pass; greeting
our neighbors - good morning, good afternoon, how are you; to ask
permission for almost everything in
return for practically nothing ...
A long list
of details that have been deleted
- swallowed by
modernity, and resist only in
their memory and the behavior
they repeated stubbornly to fight the invasion of
vulgarity.
They remind us
of civility with your
smooth gestures, polished by
the years. They do
not fret when they walk down the street
and someone – stronger – passes by them unexpectedly, forcing them to leave the sidewalk, and they move
away gently to preserve their
fragile bodies.
They do not complain when someone – faster – enters theelevator and grossly ignores them, leaving them outside, waiting for the elevator to come back down.
They do
not complain when someone – younger – passes in front of them at the grocery store’s queue, or the bank’s or pharmacy’s (despite having priority), and leaves
behind, struggling to steady their tired legs.
They do
not bother when someone – rude and uneducated – ignites
the speech, do not say “please” or “thank you”,
and talk to them using
a condescending arrogance,
confounding the wisdom of age with
disability.
They do not grumble
when someone – too
eager (or foolish) – treats them impatiently, trying to hurry them while
they remain faithful to a slower time,
a time that they preserve within
themselves and brings them closer to the divine.
And they forgive!
They forgive the incivilities and the arrogance. They forgive the unwillingness to the moodiness.
They forgive the coarseness and
the roughness. They forgive the lack of education and the ignorance. And above all that – they also forgive evil!
They
belong to a place that is above the
fierce hustle of daily life. They
are beyond: at the top of their age,
their wisdom, their kindness.
They know the ebb and
flow of life, the ups and downs - the capricious twists
of fate. They know that we will get to where they are now; it is
the inevitability of the human course.
We will
all be old one day, and most people will be
rude and grumpy, that did
not learn anything in life, and as with some wine they will
become sour and unpalatable. But some will be gentle and serene, like a fine wine that has matured quietly,
smoothly, revealing in its bouquet
all its origin and course.
We must not forget that
what we sow now –
how we treat others – will be what we will
receive in the future!
