60-years-old was once the age for retirement,
when normal human life was known to be just 60 years.
He or she reaching that age then was thought
starting a new life; hence the age 61-years-old
was called 'reborn-1-year-old'.
Are we in our 60's that much old?
As human life-span has increased a lot,
biological age is no more that important.
Important is what we can do.
The reason why we were once forced to retire was
because we couldn't do the job given to us as the yonger do.
However, we are now abler than ever to do things given to us.
As long as we can do the job given to us, we aren't old.
Whether or not we have passion for what we do,
and whether or not we have guts to undertake a tough job
determine whether we are young or old.
We are really old
when we are no more attracted by beautiful things;
We are really old when our hearts don't leap
even seeing wonderful things in life.
We may not be young enough to start a new work in life
but we aren't so old as to be unable to do better
what we have been doing so far.
We may not be young enough to arouse
any more enthusiasm in youths' hearts,
but we aren't so old as to be unable to advise them
based on our experiences.
We may not be young enough to fascinate our children
with our new success
but we aren't so old as to be unable to soothe them
if they return home from work tired.
We aren't so old as to forget hardships of life;
Not so old as to envy fortune unrelated to us;
Not so old as to destroy what we have built so far.
We aren't so old as to fail to lay new blocks
on top of what we have built with our bare hand;
Not so old as to ignore what we have done so far.
We aren't so old as to forget
that we are the very heroes of the legend
that turned wilderness to paradise,
built a fortress on the hostile land,
and created something from nothing.
We aren't so old as to fail to soothe our lonely hearts,
sometimes with a cup of wine mingling with friends
and sometimes with a poem welling from our hearts.