|
|||
 ESPAÑOL PORTUGUÊS |
|||
When old age is coming, welcome it! It is a blessing and not everybody is able to reach it. Therefore, its precious character deserves special care so that one can make plentiful use of it. When it sets up, it is inexorable! Poor you, if you treat it indifferently!
It requires a certain preparation as well as capacity to accept it as a harvest time, a time to discover abilities never thought of.
Remember the many paths you have tried to take when you were young. Many of them were extremely attractive, but they did not guarantee the economic independence so much desired and necessary at this time of life. Therefore, they were abandoned. When you reached maturity, to have status and responsibility in your profession, you had to make a choice and choose a specialization. To be good in your profession was not enough. You had to be the best! And so, you have not used all your potential, you have only scratched it, you have only superficially explored it.
It is in the third age that one can flit about, experiment … What about going back to school? Have you already consider the challenge of taking another entrance examination for a university course? What about setting out for a new kind of art? To write? To make a research? Information technology promises a lot of new possibilities. Take your chances! You are free to make use of your time and your money. Your children are brought up and self-sufficient. Your compromise is to keep healthy. It is essential to keep care of your health. In former times old people used to proclaim: “ Mens sana in corpore sano”. Make plans. Take long walks. Eat adequately. Pay attention to any symptom that runs away from the norm, stretch out your friends circle, take part in the family activities.
Ah! If you have grandchildren, enjoy them but have in mind that times have changed; this living together will be good, it is the sole opportunity you have to pass on the good things of your time which are disappearing… Give back to today´s children the richness of a true infancy. To tell and invent stories to your grandchildren is simply marvelous! You can give them the possibility of inventing the story in their own way, developing their creative capacity. Give to each of them the opportunity of having their Cinderella according to their choice. She, certainly, will not be the one they know from films, the same as everybody’s one. This will be an enchanting relationship to both sides. Try it!
The preoccupation of keeping up-to-date, the search to understand the constant changes of the world, makes old people young. Have a positive standing and do not lament for things that have passed away, nor for problems that may appear. Face them and live! Only so will old age be rich and pleasant.
Honorary Mention – Chronicle Contest– Jornal do Servidor Publico do Estado de São Paulo (Public Server Journal of State of São Paulo) - 2001
Translated by Lucia do Nascimento Sousa Biojone
WRITERS' INDEX
NEXT WRITER
REBRA
PERSONAL LINKS
AUTHOR'S E- MAIL