Is Age just a number? Ask Yayati. In the story, King Yayati -after completing hundred years of life, after achieving everything material possible, was still reluctant to go with Death when it came. He instead offered death a deal. Death was given the option of taking away any of Yayati’s sons instead, in lieu of a hundred more years of life. All but one refused. The youngest one, aged seventeen, wondered – ” my father has completed a century. Some of my brothers are in their eighties. Still, they refuse to leave. Surely, there isn’t anything worth waiting for here. I better go with Death and go gracefully.”
In the story, the trend of sacrifice continued till Yayati reached a thousand. Just a number. And finally got convinced that one can’t ever be satisfied enough to voluntarily leave this body. He decided to relent.
So why do you fear aging? Because a realization dawns on every birthday that nothing of worth has been accomplished all these years. More needs to be seen, done, and experienced. Silently, something deep keeps calling though. You try to listen to it but what happens? The mind starts convincing you that there is time. So much can be consumed. Age is just a number. The calling can wait. Who calls and hides like this? So much is there to be achieved in this life, be realistic. Chase your dreams. Life is made up of dreams anyway.
What convinces you that someday something extraordinary will happen and the coming years will be different? If the need for change isn’t being felt now what will change in the future? If the temporary is the most attractive now, how can it suddenly appear meaningless when the time to go arrives? By repeating that age is just a number – can you repeat a Yayati?
Those who have been driven by that higher intelligence, have never been bound by the concept of time. For them, age never actually mattered. Swami Vivekananda, who left before forty, didn’t need a hundred years to fulfill the role assigned. He accomplished what many individuals combined can’t dream of in a lifetime spanning a hundred. Goswami Tulsidas, was more than eighty when he started composing Ramcharitmanas. Are there any better-known poetic masterpieces of devotion and wisdom? Only a higher purpose makes age redundant, nothing else can.
When you are driven by that higher purpose, something that is outside of your ego world, you live beyond the domain of cause and effect. And what is time, but the gap between a cause and an effect? Age is irrelevant when you enter the timeless. And that timeless is now, this moment – when life is actually happening. The body ages with time. The truth is timeless. Physical aging can be delayed but can’t be denied. By playing the same game, again and again, one loses the opportunities of rebirth before death.
The storm of desires will never subside. The mind, conditioned and ruled by memories and instincts – will portray a grand scene of incompleteness. You will try and catch hold of everything you can, but no effort will be enough. When you realize that there is nowhere to reach, the running stops. Age becomes just a number then. Eternity becomes a reality.