Rape in the Storm (Photo credit: DucDigital)

A 23 year old man was recently arrested by Kenyan police after raping two octogenarians aged 84 and 86 for hours. The two grannies weren’t walking down the street wearing mini skirts and boobs showing all over, they were actually sound asleep and just didn’t know what they were getting themselves into when they opened the door for the suspect.

He is reported to have broken into one granny’s house at 9pm, held her by the throat, and pulled her out of bed for the dastardly act. The first granny later fled to a nearby home, screaming for help which alerted neighbors.

The suspect fled into the darkness and knocked on yet another granny’s door. The second octogenarian opened not knowing what lay in store for her only to endure sexual abuse which lasted for hours until the man got tired and slept in the granny’s bed!

The two grandmothers are now recuperating at a local hospital. When asked what came over him, the culprit could only blame marijuana!

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By studying the various phases of life of the humans closely, one can easily figure out that all that they do in their childhood, be it games, schooling, college life, or socializing, are focused towards grooming the individuals into persons who would be acquiring the skills that are necessary for them to become independent individuals. Even though they are supported by their parents in their childhood days, they have to grow out of the cocoon of safety and get into a profession, where they start off a new lease of life of independence, socially and economically. Moreover, the person who needs respect has to work so as to leave their mark in their social circle at least, even if they cannot transform the world.

Entrepreneur or Employee:

The persons who have discontinued or completed formal education have two choices, wherein they can either do business or become part of a business. The former requires the person to have the necessary commercial skills to be a leader who can take the risks and think like an entrepreneur, wherein they can either take over their family business or from others, or just go ahead and start off their own venture, after gaining the necessary experience in the field. On the other hand, the person would want to have a standard income flowing into their banks periodically and choose a job wherein they serve the entrepreneurs and gain income weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

New Birth:

Have you ever noticed that when the person steps out of their student dress into the professional dress, they make a huge leap and there starts a totally new life for them! Therefore, starting a career itself is as important as a child being born into the corporate world. Therefore, the age of the professional would begin when they start their part-time or full-time career and start to earn their own income to support themselves as well as those depending on them.

Shifting Lives:

Whenever a person shifts jobs in the same field of business, it would not be a huge change, since they are going to continue to use the same skills again at a different level in a new organization. However, when the employee chooses to have a career paradigm shift, such as in the case of the person who has been in production department to take over a position in human resources or finance or as a college professor, they would undergo radical changes in terms of knowledge, economics and social status and therefore it is equal to starting a new life altogether, as their past life (career) may not be considered (or considered trivially) in the new profession. So, every career shift means a new professional life begins and the age counter is set back to ‘0′, as the person is back to their drawing boards.

Gaining Experience:

Professional age is very important and the recruiters are keen to know about it since they would come to know of the person’s degree of ability and their skill sets based on the number of years that they have toiled in the same profession, since they believe strongly that ‘practice makes perfect’ and that ‘by being consistently in a field, the person would have faced various situations and problems and would have gained the knowledge to overcome them’. Any company would like to tap such exposure and experience of their applicants.

Lack of Experience is a Gift:

The fresher who is right out of college has ‘0′ as his/her professional age, but that is also good for some reasons. They would not have exposed to the industry and therefore, it is easy to train, groom and mould them according to the requirements of the employers. Setting corporate culture in fresh minds is easier than those who come from different corporate cultural backgrounds and the HR team knows it well. Therefore ‘zilch’ experience is also a value add, provided the students are taught to position themselves well.

Learning about the professional ages, since one may have multiple lives, it is necessary to make good use of the numbers to influence the job market to their advantage. Moreover, the person should gain necessary skills to match to the number as shown in their professional age.

The child is sent to school and college by the parents with the expectation that at the end of each academic year, the kids would learn a lot of skills, right from reading, writing to analytical and critical thinking or higher order thinking skills that would enable them to ensure that they can lead lives effectively like matured adults in the future. However, the education system has been more effective in creating the mark-mongering robots than the intelligent persons and the core objective has been marks and not in analyzing the skills that the children have or love to earn and guide them to hone these abilities. On the contrary, the teachers aim at getting everybody tested on the same plane, regardless of the multiple intelligences that the children may possess.

Intelligence Quotient:

Lots of social statisticians and mathematicians have researched and found out that the normal human being should possess certain amount of intelligence quotient depending on their age and they also clearly state that the IQ need not be age appropriate, since not everyone would score a 100+, which is the statutory minimum, due to the mismatch of the mental age as compared to the chronological age. The person with a better IQ would do well in case of analytical skills and even if the person has lesser IQ level as shown at the end of the standard IQ test, they may be creative and more effective in other fields where innovative creation is demanded.

Being a Child is Good:

Those who enjoy better IQ tend to have inquisitive minds and would not have grown out of their childhood to enter into the painful and boring mask of adulthood, which is more pretentious to live.. By keeping alive the kid inside them, they tend to be more creative, out-of-the-box thinkers, lateral thinkers, strategists, planners, etc., who can shine in the creative fields, while those with good mathematical skills can shine in the fields of accountancy, statistics, etc. It is good to be a child more often than not, so as to be grounded and to live life truly without the mask of maturity!

Slow Learners Crucified:

In schools, some kids perform so well while others may just average or score too low. Every person with the same physical age does not have the equal mental age and this is the reason for having learners with varied speeds of learning. Moreover, other factors like the way in which they use their senses also demands unique pedagogical approaches in teaching, which must be focused on enabling learning process and not just filling the guts with information and choking the kids.

Benefits of Knowing Mental Age: Better Education:

When the true mental age of the kids are identified by the teachers, they can groom the children better with the necessary attention given to them in
(a) identifying what engages them,
(b) what is there unique intelligence
(c) bringing out the prodigal genius in them.

It is never fair to expect everyone to score an A+ in math or science and that need not be. Has nature not taught us that ‘variety is the spice of life’ and everyone cannot become accountants and clerks!

Benefits of Knowing Mental Age: Better Work Allocation:

Moreover, when the employees learn about the mental age, they are distribute work accordingly such as in the case of strategizing to the analytically strong persons while the routine repetitive tasks can go to those who are okay with mundane tasks.

Social Transformation Required!

It is easy to stamp a child as a fool, but it takes lots of guts on part of the parents, relatives and societies to accept the child’s unique intelligence and accordingly groom him to be successful in the areas of their choices. Does the so-called civilized societies really have the guts to explore this novel way of education!

It is crucial to accept the fact that the age of the mind/brain can be calculated, just as one would use subtraction to find his/her physical/chronological age and most importantly respect it. Find it, have fun and do the necessary amends to live smartly.

The usual response to this question is along the lines that providing there is a good quality of life then living forever or, at least, for a few centuries would be exciting. Just consider the last hundred years or so. We’ve gone from the Wright brothers’ first flight of just 120 feet to putting men on the Moon a quarter of a million miles away. Diseases like smallpox have been eradicated while others, such as TB, are far less dangerous. Alexander Graham Bell could never have imagined that his simple telephone would evolve into a mini hand-held computer while the rise of the automobile has transformed society beyond Gottfried Daimler’s wildest dreams. And if geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Einstein and Maria Curie were still alive today, how much different would the world be? So who knows what the next few centuries will bring?

But there are problems with living to a ripe, very old age.

The most obvious problem is that if people stopped dying, or lived for considerably longer than they do now, then the world would quickly become overpopulated. During the 20th century the world’s population rose from about 1.8 billion to about 6 billion. If the current birth rate continues unchanged over the next 100 years then the global population will reach 9 billion. Of course, even if death through ageing ceased, people would still die. Disease, accidents, suicide, murder and war would all take their toll but the death rate would be miniscule. Overpopulation on a world wide scale would rapidly deplete the planet of its natural resources while the unstoppable spread of cities would eat into valuable land required for agriculture.

One question that everyone would have to ask themselves is how they would cope. No matter how much you love your job, would you really want to be doing the same thing in a hundred, five hundred or even a thousand years from now? And if you hate your job then being stuck in a rut for centuries could be a living hell. Of course, there is no guarantee that you would have a job. We cannot provide full employment as it is. Could you spend the rest of your long life on the pittance that the government is prepared to give you? If you are one of the lucky ones to have a job you perhaps would fight tooth and nail to keep it. But how would the younger generation view your determination to remain in gainful employment? Chances are, they would resent it. The longer you keep your job, the less chance they have of becoming employed. Could longevity spark a generation war? Perhaps.

And what of your personal relationships? It is becoming increasingly common for people to go their own separate ways after being together for just a few years. So will marriage become obsolete? When you agreed to sharing your life with your partner “…till death us do part” did you really think it would last for a thousand years and that you would have to buy a thousand wedding anniversary presents not to mention a thousand birthday and perhaps Christmas presents?

Maybe one of the less obvious pitfalls is just sheer boredom. We all get bored, of course. For most people boredom will last a few hours, perhaps as long as a couple of days. Yet what if you had to try to stimulate your brain every day for the next ten centuries? Sure, the invention of new technologies and changes to the way society behaves would bring some challenges, entertainment and amusement, but it is difficult to imagine a mundane-free utopia.

Of course there are potential solutions to all these problems, and solutions that we cannot even yet imagine. To control population growth, for example, governments could ban births. Or at least try to. Yet humans, like most creatures, have an inherent desire to procreate. Ask yourself: would you really agree not to have children? And what would happen if you did start a family? Perhaps you could be fined or face a lengthy jail term? Perhaps the child would be taken off you to heaven knows where? In a desperate world where food and water are scarce commodities would society sanction infanticide? Or forced chemical castration? Who knows?

There is undoubtedly something attractive about living longer: watching the world and society change, perhaps for the better, and witnessing the never ending advances in science and technology. Yet there are serious pitfalls to longevity which society will one day have to address.

For me the prospect of an extremely long life brings the possibility that I will one day see my football team win the league, though I doubt that a million years will be long enough!

The boy or old man rather was born into a family that was disgusted by his looks  such that they left him on the steps of another family which looked like a community home. Ben grew up with a black mother who treated him as if he was her own. She knew he would be facing difficulties, being ignored by the kids at school for being born old. Eventually he learned to walk and that was the beginning of the process of getting younger. He had no idea of course that he would meet a girl who would mature as he would be getting younger and they would keep their love all the time.

He was a boy who was an old man and grew younger with a passion for working on a tugboat in order to earn his keep. He had already been rejuvenated by the time he was picked, built still visually too old for the work, This was to work on the high seas during wartime when the tugs were even under fire from enemy ships but he returned home unharmed and there he saw the girl of his dreams turn into a woman that he would love.

She was a dancer and he followed her at her lessons until she had an accident and could only teach. By then he had gotten even younger as she aged but he was in love with the person and not the physical beauty as was apparent without words but just by watching the two characters interact until they met at what they knew to be the midpoint in their affair; midpoint because by then she must have realized that she was halfway through life and he appeared to be half as young.

All this was recounted by an old woman in a hospital bed admitting to her daughter that she was the product of the love she had for a man who would grow younger instead of older. It all began with a man who would invent a clock that went backwards instead of forwards so that soldiers killed in the first great war might come back home.

You cannot stop the aging process, but you can definitely fight the debilitating process that so many just accept as part of their lives. You can slow down the aging process and turn some of the damage you’ve done over the years around, restoring some fitness.

There are three simple ways to do this by yourself. The big three are physical exercise, better nutrition and mental stimulation. All three of those remedies are totally under your control and do not depend on medications or joining expensive gyms.

Physical Exercise Is Positive

There is a growing collection of evidence that physical exercise affects your chances of living longer, with less chance of suffering from physical disabilities or incapacitating disease. That evidence also proves that people who have regular physical activity are physically younger than people the same age who do not participate in physical activity.

As you age, the “natural” decline of your muscle strength can be reversed with simple exercise and light muscle resistance training. The easiest way to exercise is to take walks in local parks or gardens or on the beach if you live near the ocean. If the weather is bad, visit the mall and window shop while you walk up and down the aisles. Some malls open early for seniors walking to exercise before the shoppers arrive.

Gardening is another form of non-damaging physical activity. Bending and planting flowers and even a tomato plant or two will increase your flexibility and reduce your chances of falling. It also has mental benefits from the planning, planting, remembering to water and anticipating your harvest.

Better Nutrition Is Positive

Let’s face it. Our bodies do not forgive us like they used to not so many years ago. Besides diminishing exercise, our diet has become less and less nutritious over the decades since we left our mother’s kitchen.

Over 25-30 years ago, it was “common knowledge” that the only way to lose weight was to eat less and increase our exercise. Counting calories was almost a religious experience.

Now it is pretty common knowledge that counting calories is less important than knowing what to eat and how to do it. Avoiding all fats is not the way to go. Healthy fats are walnuts, almonds, flaxseed, extra virgin olive oil, avocado.

Natural carbohydrates and whole grains have benefits for your energy and heart health, like old fashioned oatmeal, yams and sweet potatoes, brown rice and 100% whole wheat bread and pasta. Any green vegetable, along with onions and mushrooms will quietly support your body’s health. 

Low fat dairy products and grass-fed beef are healthy additions to your diet, along with salmon, tuna and chicken breasts. If you give your body what it needs to improve your health, you will have less disease in your life.

Mental Stimulation Is Positive

Many older Baby Boomers have become more and more isolated as their bodies get more fragile and their health is less than it was. Friends move away or need to enter assisted living facilities. This emotional isolation can have a disastrous effect on your mental abilities. Add lack of physical activity and a poor diet to that and you have a perfect formula for memory loss for whatever reason.

The solution is very simple. Maintain social contacts; make new friends if necessary and develop a social life. Do the crossword puzzle in the newspaper with your morning coffee. Get a book of Word Search puzzles and solve different ones frequently. Try to solve Sudoku puzzles. Play video games on your computer.

The mental stimulation and companionship will keep your mind sharp and can reverse the damage already done. It is never too late to start taking charge of your own physical and mental future.

It is also a fact that the parts of our adult lives that our children experience, leave out a large part of what we experienced in the early parts of our lives, before our children were born.

I have completed the three-score part of the years that have been allocated to me, and, like many people of my age, have spent a great deal of time looking back.

I moved to the UK a few years back, and experienced an interest in, and acknowledgement of the contributions of the soldiers who fought in the the Second World War that I had not previously experienced in my home country, South Africa. My father served in the Union Defence Force of South Africa during the latter years of the war. He served in north Africa and in Italy. Like many ex-servicemen, he was taciturn about his experiences, and as a young boy I was only able to gleaned snippets of his adventures and experiences from him. Now that I am almost of the age that he was when he died, I have discovered things about him that I did not know, and my heart aches that I was not able to share and discuss these things with him when he was alive. How sad that I was not able to honour his deeds during his life, as I will now do in memoriam.

I have resolved that my children will not find themselves in the same situation when they reach my age, and I have begun to write about that part of my own life that I experienced before I met my wife, and before we had our children. I will also write about our my perspective of our shared experiences as a family. I owe this to my family.

Write down your history for the sake of your children. Don’t let them, too, feel the ache and regret that they did not know and honour your early life in they way that they might want to.    

I am nearing the end of my seventh decade, disabled and single, virtually housebound and visually handicapped. Yet my social life is better than it has ever been.

I employ someone to help me with housework and someone else to assist with the garden. They are both areas that are important to me. This is my haven.

To finance this, I do not smoke, drink, watch TV, gamble or go on holiday. I have no desire to do any of those things, but if I did want a holiday, I would find a way to make it possible.

I spend my money on further education, communication via computer and the Internet, cultural events, gardening and creative pursuits.

Much of what I achieve is done on a barter system. I undertake to work on committees in return for transport to the organisations that interest me. I use my knowledge skills , counselling, writing, languages, alternative health, gardening etc., in exchange for practical assistance. I evince real care and concern for others and in return, they show real care and concern for me.

I demand nothing. My philosophy is simple. If something I want does not happen, then it is not meant to be and surely, something even better will turn up instead. If someone disappoints me, I accept that my priorities are not theirs and wait for the next opportunity.

This basic philosophy was expressed by a Civil War veteran as “Trust in God, but keep your powder dry.” As far as I can, I prepare and anticipate, but having done all I can, I let it go and enjoy whatever comes.

One aspect of being often dependent on others is that there is always an element of surprise, a need to be prepared and flexible to fit in with their plans, as well as the ability to say “No” if it is not really what I want to do at the time.

The name of the game is Freedom.

Your choices may not be mine. You may choose safety rather than adventure, but the freedom is yours. The choice is yours.

The most important freedom is freedom from fear.

I live one day at a time, making provision for the best and the worst, but reacting only to what is actually happening here and now. I do not waste today in either anticipation or fear of tomorrow. Today is all I have. It is all anyone ever has. It is a gift: the present.

Reading an account by Iris Murdoch’s husband of his wife’s retreat into Alzheimer’s, I was struck by his assertion that once you face and accept the inevitability of death, you are truly free to enjoy every moment as a bonus.

One health professional was determined I should not deceive myself about the seriousness of my condition. “It will get worse,” she said, “Nothing more certain. It will get worse.”

She was quite right. The symptoms are more of a nuisance. It is getting worse. My boundaries are narrowing. My abilities and my physical world are shrinking. Perhaps I won’t make it on the Spitzbergen run or do my two years VSO. Or perhaps I will. Who knows? Not her. Not me….But what she did not tell me, because she did not know, was that it also gets better.

I need no excuses to do what I enjoy and leave what I don’t. I eat, sleep, work, play, speak, act, just as I please. I if I want to take chances, be extravagant or outrageous or do something that may seem foolish, there is no-one to stop me.

It is my choice. I choose the future. I choose freedom.

Life has always been good, but now it is great!

AGEING

Life sure has its twist and turns.

It has its ups and downs.

Life has its good and bad times,

times of laughter, times of frowns,

times when life is confusing,

when of tomorrow we’re unsure,

when we look back on yesterday

and regret some times before

when we may have used poor judgment,

not have done the things we should,

but all in all, lessons once learned,

well, for the most part life is good…

And we learn a lot through aging,

we grow better, more defined with time

and the essence of our being

becomes not so unlike that of a fine wine.

I don’t begrudge growing older,

except maybe for a few aches and pains,

and I wouldn’t want to have to

relive my life again.

It was hard enough just growing up

to say nothing of growing old

but the memories, both good and bad

are more priceless than is pure gold…

And that’s the way it is with aging,

with all those things we thought we knew

as we reap the harvest we have sown

when our autumn years are due

after walking the path we’ve chosen,

while seeing our young days through.

Life is more about how we play the game

whether than win or lose;

It’s about playing fair and doing good,

being honest in the things we choose,

choosing worthwhile goals,

being steadfast, keeping our aim sure

and really looking at the whole,

not just the moment;

think things through before we act;

consider both sides of the consequence

before we simply react, strike back.

There is always someone who will have more

when wealth and fame become our quest

but life’s reward is far the greater

when we know we’ve done our best

and we can look back on our yesterdays

with pleasure and with joy,

even at all life’s imperfections

despite not having the most toys

or maybe not accomplishing

all of our youthful dreams.

In aging I have found life’s been more blest

than what it at first seemed

when I saw life as a race with time

in the days of my youth,

when life was lived more or less on whim

than really seeking out the truth.

It has taken slowing down and aging

to truly appreciate life’s best

and for me to realize

how richly I’ve been blest

despite life’s aggravations

and my stumbles along the way.

If I hadn’t ever made mistakes

I’d not know what I know today

and might not have sought out the right path

or ever turned my life around,

but as I’ve aged I’ve found my feet

are now walking on solid ground.

I don’t worry much about the waves,

trends and fads and such,

and I’ve learned more to appreciate

life’s blessings very much,

the simple things, just sorting out

the difference between want and need

and learning not to compromise

life’s truths and things in which I believe.

I’ve learned a lot from living

with all life’s maybes and supposes

and appreciate life more these days

now I’ve learned to stop and smell the roses.

I don’t begrudge youth or growing older,

Except now maybe those few aches and pains,

but I really wouldn’t want to for a moment 

have to relive my life again

and live all those past years over

unless I could know what I know now.

Youth may claim the spice of life

but there is something priceless about age

as God grants grace, contentment, peace of mind

and throws in a dash of sage.