You are not old, believe me...

An old fellow fell in love with a lady,
got down on his knees and told her
that there were two things he wished
to ask her. One was, “Will you marry
me?” She replied, “Yes,” and asked
what his second question was. He
replied, “Will you help me up?”
Jokes on retirement tend to make it
synonymous with a toothless,
impotent, arthritic and amnesia-
ridden terminal illness of advancing
age. As an old man said, “There are
three signs of old age. Loss of
memory... I forget the other two!”
There is no consensus on what a
retired person should or should not
do. Many for whom the entire work
years were only a daily ritual of
unvarying actions find the sudden
vacuum hard to cope with and spend
all their time engaged in masterly
inactivity, staring at the ceiling,
minds emptied of every coherent
thought. Continuing to do the same
work even after retirement is hardly
a solution — the solution is to
explore other interests that may
have lain dormant during their work
years and which they can now
indulge in. The man who has interests
outside the work area and who is
passionately interested in the world
around him and the people in it (of
either sex) can never be bored with
the so-called inactivity of
retirement. It's a calamity if you
find that the only exciting thing you
look forward to is the arrival of
your pension. Of course, in our
government offices, such is our
work ethic that you can hardly tell
the difference when someone
retires. Government (to modify
Robert Frost) is a place full of
willing people — a few willing to
work and the majority willing to let
them.
But don't despair. Just look around;
there's so much to do — as John
Burrough said, “I still find each day
too short for all the thoughts I want
to think, all the walks I want to take,
all the books I want to read, and all
the friends I want to see.” You don't
have to pessimistically bemoan your
fate — even if you think you have
nothing to do, you can still practise
to do it well. Those who cope with
retirement best are those who look
upon it as a time of fun and believe
that a good time to retire is before
it is too late to have a good time.
And it is smart to prepare for
retirement right from one's teens.
As Arthur Morgan remarked, “A life
which is empty of purpose until 65
will not suddenly become filled on
retirement.” If you like teaching,
you can teach. You can travel. You
can learn music, cooking, carpentry.
You can try writing. Some
experiments may not always work —
a friend joined FB on his son's
insistence. It bored the life out of
him. He found the coffee-house
atmosphere in FB intellectually
fatiguing and the thing he found
hardest to cope with was saying “he-
he-he-he” to signify mirth.
‘Statutory senility'
Someone called retirement
“statutory senility.” One sure way to
confirm this is for a retiree to
promptly join a ‘senior citizens' club
and sit around among hapless and
tired individuals being fed tiresome
speeches on spirituality interspersed
with tea and multigrain biscuits (on
lucky days they are treated to
samosas!). And if they are well
behaved, their minders will take
them on a picnic where they will
throw a plastic ball at one another
and be fed more speeches about
spirituality. Senility is often used
interchangeably with the ‘senior
citizen' status, that's the tragedy.
But why must you psyche yourself
into thinking that you are getting
old and senile? As George Burns
said, “You can't help getting older,
but you don't have to get old!”
I think that life begins at 60 — once
you begin calling yourself “old,” and
allow yourself to think that the sulci
in your brain are getting shallower
and the gyri are getting flatter,
there is very little anyone can do to
help.

Chewing food wel helps weight loss

A new study has suggested that
chewing each mouthful of food for
longer might help you lose weight,
and also reduce the amount of
calories consumed during a meal.
The study showed that volunteers
who chewed each mouthful 40 times
ate 12 per cent less food than those
who chewed just 15 times.
It is thought that chewing for a long
time checks over-eating as the brain
is given more time to receive signals
from the stomach that it is full.
It also apparently lowers the levels
of ghrelin, a hormone that controls
hunger by circulating in the
digestive system.
Researchers at Harbin Medical
University in China carried out a
couple of experiments on 16 slim
men and 14 obese men in their late
teens or twenties.
In the first experiment, they tested
whether the obese men chewed their
food differently to their lean
competitors or not.
Each volunteer was treated to a pork
pie and captured by a secret camera
to notice the number of times they
chewed before swallowing.
The results showed that even though
the obese men chewed at the same
speed as the slim ones, they
swallowed their food in quicker time
than the leans.
In the second experiment, another
portion of pork pie was given to both
groups to chew 15 times before
swallowing, and then the exercise
was repeated but they were asked to
chew 40 times instead.
The study found that when
volunteers chewed for longer they
consumed 11.9 per cent fewer
calories, no matter if they were lean
or obese.
"Research indicates eating quickly,
gorging and binge eating have a
substantial effect on being
overweight," the Daily Mail quoted
the researchers as saying.
"Our results showed obese
participants chewed less and
ingested more quickly than lean
ones," they added.
Blood tests that were meted out 90
minutes after eating also found that
the levels of ghrelin was reduced
when the volunteers had chewed the
food 40 times rather than 15.
The findings were published in the
American Journal of Clinical
Nutrition.