Are you Aged?

== originally posted at http://raghu.mark.googlepages.com on 4/17/07 ==

Its been quite some time since i wrote a article like this. After Landmark education, i had stopped thinking so deeply. But, some of the recent events have made me go back and put my thought process into work.

There was this question that was thrown at me quite sometime back "Are we getting old" ? and this question really led me to the edge of the cliff. "Are we old to do somethings?", "Are we realizing our age?" and so on ...

Many say that the age between 20 - 30 is full of confusions. confusion about work, confusion about love, confusion about life .... sirf confusion hi confusion.

I see a lot of these people (ppl b/w the age group of 20 - 30) trying to act as if they have aged considerably. Many even go to the extent of hating young people (age group: 10 - 20). I was afraid, i would become one of them. These people, if they can't do something, give the pretense of age and wisdom ... is this correct?

Well, i did quite a bit of thinking and recollecting about this. I remember a mail from a guy, who after quite a lot of affairs and failures finally realized that it is just a passing infatuation. He wrote "as i started getting older, i realized that love is not what we think. I have now given up all affairs and waiting for my marriage to be fixed by my family." Was he right in his assumption? Maybe, he was ... maybe, he was not. But, one thing i realized very recently was that he couldn't make those relationships work and hence gave up. He gave up the battle decided to retire. His choice may have been correct .. it really does not matter.

Similarly, i went through some more cases where the person gives up something owing to age. I remember my friend saying " i can't trek anymore. my age is gone". What did he really mean by that? Physically, he is still strong as a Bull. What made him owe it to the age? Do we become wise as we go ahead in our life? or, is it the opposite? One of my friend says " we start realizing the value of life and understand that taking risks is not worth it". This maybe true ... but, isn't everything in life a big risk ... what are we trying to run from? What is it that makes us feel aged? WHY, was the question.

And today morning, while travelling in the auto, something flashed through my mind ... it was not the answer to all those questions. But, it was the realization that "WE ARE NOT AGING, WE ARE AGING OURSELVES". This is a bit difficult to explain. Its our mind that is telling us that we have aged, it is our habits that are telling us that we have aged. It is the people around us, who are telling that we have aged. How does age relate to whatever you want to do? It is ABSURD.

Its time people come out of that wrong notion. I wrote this whole thing hoping that someone out there will realize the mistake that we are doing .... anyway, i have understood it. And, that is what really matters to me.

- raghu