張心怡
When Chinese people attend the birthday celebration of the elderly, they
always wish the elder 「happiness as immense as the East Sea and life as
long as the South Mountain.」 They think that the elder you are, the
more blessing you will get from God. The belief in longevity is so
strong that in ancient times, many people tried to make pills of
immortality, and, because of the lack of scientific knowledge, died
testing the magical medicine. Nowadays, many people are still looking
for the wonder drug that would extend life. In the future, humans may
implant duplicated organs to replace their broken or outworn ones. Is
long life really such a desirable thing? I am not so sure.
As life expectancy increases, there are more and more old people in the
world; in fact, one out of ten people in the world today are over the
age of 60. However, it also brings some problems. Physically, people
grow old, and so do their organs. Their physical vigor is not like when
they are young. The elder』s actions become slow, and they cannot do
certain fierce exercises because they could get hurt very easily. They
also develop some chronic diseases--for example, hypertension, diabetes,
Parkinson』s disease--and get infected very easily. Mentally, they are
likely to get Alzheimer』s disease, or elderly depression caused by their
chronic illness. Their children would have to devote energy and time to
their parents, and thus affecting the young people』s own family life and
cutting down on the young people』s productivity, too.
Medical treatment for the elderly may cost a lot of medical resources
and expenses, and the government has to provide extensive social welfare
and social security for the elderly. The bigger the elderly population,
the more the expenses cost. Such expenses naturally take a big bite out
of the national budget. Once national productivity lowers, so will the
funds of many kinds of national developments, social welfare and social
security. The quality of our living environment might become worse, and
the new generations could not enjoy good care … there are too many
problems created by this worldwide issue.
Life is a wonderful thing, but if living for such a long time may
create so many problems, what advantages does a long life provide? Why
not live only for an appropriate period of time, and devote your energy
to making your life richer and more content instead of longer? After
all, the quality of your whole life is much more important than the
length of your life!