Age Is Just A Number

It sometimes happens that a random, unexpected person teaches you so much in a very short time. It so happened that I had to go to  Pune railway station to see my dada-dadi off to Goa. There we realised that, unfortunately enough, the train was three hours late. So we sat in the waiting room, hoping that the delay would be recovered. Now, this waiting room had its own variety of people. Some were sleeping, some irritated, some busy in their own world, and some were continuously stuffing their mouths like a starving-since-one-year creature! A torture to the stomach?! But among them all was an eighty-seven year old man, sitting quietly, all by himself. A person who sat next to him told us his age and that he was the only one left in his family. Life is cruel sometimes. But this old man had a different, out-of-the-world kind of spark in his eyes. When a fellow said to him in a complimenting tone that his confidence was worth appreciation, he immediately answered something that has made me write this. He said "Confidence is all a person needs to be alive." Now hearing this from 'him' was a thunderclap. A person who was so lonely had these thoughts and we worry so freaking much over such tiny issues. Absolutely unnecessarily. He was just physically old but at heart he was still young. He had the damn courage to go on till the very end. His senses wont co-operate with this spirit but that didnt bother him. Even when life had been harsh upon him, he kept living and living happily. He could have sat there whining, collecting sympathy from everyone he meets and tell the world how bad his luck was but no, he chose what we all need to learn to choose, he chose to keep smiling against all odds, quite liteally. This incident taught me two things. One, that "Age is just a number and second, if he at this age has this amount of faith, hope and courage, why do we have everything in our favour, and yet complain so much?