Fats, Vitamins and Minerals

I wrote this preface “The Incompassionate Society”* in 2000 for a short essay called “Lunch” which I wrote in 1998 and first distributed through local BBSs and shortly through the Internet). Also, now I realize that the real reason why I was invited out to lunch by my aunt and her elderly friends was because I have been staying at home rather miserably after my father died in 1997. I am posting these texts here as a re-newed reflection on a global society obsessed with “youth culture.”

(*After Imelda Marcos’s book of speeches “The Compassionate Society.”)

The Incompassionate Society

I recorded a most enlightening lunch hour in my journal two years ago out of being so overjoyed in the presence of elderly people. It constantly served as a reminder to myself that when young people are irritated or annoyed at the idiosyncracies of the old, they fail to realize that these are the beginnings of an altogether incompassionate society.

Every human being inevitably becomes old - his or her mental and physical faculties heading towards degredation, sickness having the potential to accelerate it. Society’s dispassioned bordering on malevolent look towards the elderly is a refusal to honor and accept the fragility and preciousness of the human life cycle. We think we can forever control the way our body and mind works, we think we can deter or plan our obsolescence - but when it is our turn at aging, we are no longer in control.

Our significance and worth, no matter how imbedded in ourselves, to a greater extent are in the hands of those who precede us. The elderly who have lost their hearing are lucky that they do not hear the cruel mssives of their younger colleagues. Where I work at, the respect for the painful and life-threatening effects of time is close to decay.

Among my greatest fears is that without compassion, we become insensitive to our blessings and become overwhelmed by life’s inevitable miseries - and that the natural struggle that embraces our life would become an unnatural injustice.

Lunch

Lunch today was with ten golden girls - yep, ten of them, what a crowd. It’s my aunt’s 70th birthday and she thought she’d treat the girls out to lunch at a chinese restaurant, it’s this lauriat tradition that’s meant to promise long life.

The crowd consisted of two groups - and my aunt introduced them to each other, “Sister, this is doctor, doctor, this is sister, sister, this is doctor…” they were all nuns, lay missionaries and ph.d.’s.

The youngest is sister Norma who is 64 years old, and when the bill came she was the first to bring out her senior citizen card and declare “I am proud to be a senior citizen.” Five of them brought out their senior citizens card and for a while they discussed the benefits of having it. Twenty percent discount - momentarily I wished I had one.

The oldest is Mrs. Laya (yes, she is the mother of) who is 88 years old. She is short, thin, has white hair like Andy Warhol’s and I could see her pink scalp showing where her hair was parted. She has a brown mark on her right cheek and her facial bones were glorious she could be a model. Deep in their sockets her eyes were wide and bright.

The most charming of them is Ching, one of the ph.d.’s group. She is short, fat, slow and funny. Nearly 80 years old she has traveled around the world, mostly on her own. It is quite amazing how she had managed that - I had gone with her once on a little hong kong trip and had seen how painstakingly slow she was. She would stand very still and look up at you, only her eyes moved, and with not a single care in the world or to your prodding, she would walk inch by inch; no matter, she always got where she wanted to go - perhaps even farther than many of us who are always rushing with our lives.

Talk consisted of doctors (m.d.’s) and priests (I suppose as one gets older, one has to have a good doctor and a good priest as friends). Then they talked about retirement, real estate (post-war), and politics. Later, talk shifted to weight, from 180 to 108 pounds. Amazingly, no one talked about health or the fat in the food. They jabbed the fries with their forks, put them in their mouths and asked “what is this?”

They were all so simple, and wore very little or no jewelry at all. After eating, many of them reapplied their lipstick and took extra napkins and toothpicks and put them in their bags. They all had white hair, liver spots and missing teeth, and the most charming faces were those who laughed easily and talked heartily. For a while I wondered how my father would have been like had he reached their age.

Full and rather tired from yesterday’s work, I went straight home, while the rest of them went malling throughout the afternoon. So how on earth did I get into that crowd? Well, there weren’t any leftovers from dinner last night and my aunt wanted to spare me from a sardines lunch all by myself. When I got home, I planned on sleeping out the afternoon but couldn’t - my mind was whirling with thoughts from lunch. It’s amazing how old people could still inspire you by just being themselves. That lunch hour, I was blessed with 10 of them.

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