PLAYING THE LAST GAME

PLAYING THE LAST GAME

The Resurgence of Youthful Energy

Playing One’s last game can prove to be a very exciting adventure. Looking at one player gathering his last balance and striving for a last win is a bracing sight. For the player of course it is a moment that brings back a peak vision of his own daring acts of the past and their glorious outcome.

Can the seniors now in the present recall such daring moments in their past and start playing an endgame to energize their present moments? Having so many years of various experience as memories and an access to analytical skill, can the seniors trust themselves to play their last game as well?

The questions that come up now: how and when? Can they muster enough self confidence to start a new way of spending their days? Much advice pours in these days to direct them on how to spend their time. Meditation comes to the top for training them to achieve focus and mindful breathing. The practicing of gratitude is advised as a veritable life line, and the art of letting go all that one cannot control becomes the watch word for a trouble free life.

Relationships to others are also portrayed as taking a new turn in senior lives. Attachments are to be minimized or given up with a new mask of detachment worn to usher in a cloak of safety from worries. This detachment can be extended to one’s own family since most worries arise from anxiety from one’s own dear ones.

A style of life that is thus advised as ideal for seniors leaves them very much to themselves with these altered interests. In their working lives for many years, they were not aware of the importance of meditation or detachment and they have now to be steered away to train themselves on new ways.

The point that I now try to raise is whether the seniors can continue to grow their interests in the same areas where they used to perform well in their working life. Their aptitude and skill are of most importance and it fits them well to persist. It is not true that they have to learn new ways of spending time because they are out of regular employment. They can discover their old zest for doing things if they continue in the vein. One should not alter one’s interest and way of thinking when one crosses the senior mark.

I have taken up this issue only after meeting with many seniors walking away with regretful memories of their active years. They think they have now reached an age when they are ineligible for any active occupation without retraining in novel interests. It could be very wrong to think so since their own aptitudes and skills are still available and could be used with fresh impetus.

Playing one’s last game with old skill and fresh impetus could be quite exciting for seniors.