Dear Jeyamohan,
I watched your video about old people and it set me thinking about something I have often observed in my own family and among people around me.
Perhaps the deepest problem of old age is that people have spent almost their entire lives thinking about their children. Their youth, their work, their savings, their sacrifices—all of it gradually becomes centred around their children. The children become the meaning around which their lives are organised.
But when old age comes, the same thought that gave their lives meaning can slowly become an unwanted thought. The children have their own lives, their own responsibilities, their own families and their own concerns. They cannot remain the centre of their parents’ lives in the way they once were.
Then the old person is left with a strange emptiness. The very love and concern that sustained them for decades begins to feel like a burden to others. They continue to think about their children, while the children are no longer able to think about them with the same intensity.
Perhaps this is one of the great tragedies of our family structure. We teach people throughout their lives to live for their children, but we rarely teach them how to live for themselves when their children no longer need them.
What you said in the video made me realise that old age is not merely a period of physical decline. It is also the difficult moment when a person has to discover a new reason for living after the purpose around which their entire life was built has disappeared.
Raja Kumar
