I hate growing old. not because of the declining faculties, not because of the wrinkles, aches and pains. not because you become only a shadow of your past vitality and beauty. somehow, somewhere along the way, you lose your ability to laugh, at others and at yourself. it is not a voluntary action, it is not something that you consciously carry out, but as you grow older, you forget how to be silly. you forget how to laugh, even if you want to from every pore of your body. everything is so measured, so precise, so deliberately thought out. gone is the impetus haze of the youth, the melting into puddles of laughters over the silliest and smallest of things, the pranks, the fun. now, even the jokes in reader's digest manage only to wrangle a wry grin.

it's called growing up, some people would say. personally, i don't see any conflict between being a responsible tie-wearing adult and being lively. just because you are hitting the age, you have to conform to the stereotype of the boring mentally-slow grimacing aged? the last perhaps the result of hermorrhoids but there is no saying that you can't be a pain in the butt and still laugh? granted, all those weights on the shoulder does make one a little grumpy, grouchy even, but this is life. you can live it acting like the not-so-distant cousin of snow white's little dwarf or you can live it laughing all the way, responsibilities or not. it's called making lemonade with the lemons that life gives you. the 'r' word is merely another excuse for being mr grouchy.

that said, even with the right mentality, even with a mouthful of endorphins-releasing chocolates in your mouth, you still can't laugh till your belly threatens to split open. what exactly is the problem here? you can't cackle even if you wanted to. growing old checks in with a lot of accompanied baggages. cynicism, egoism, jadedness, pride, sensibility, apprehension, awareness. somewhere along the path, we exchanged all that for the age of the innocence. i am determined to be joyful, not just contented, but laughing silly like people a quarter my age. forget decorum, forget sensibility. the next person who asks me to act my age will get a cavemanlike clobber on the head with a club, and i have no intention whatsoever of dragging the comatose body back to the cave. however, even with the correct attitude to life, or at least correct in my own eyes, i still can't do it. how do you laugh to zero stimulus? how do you cackle at a group of stiff-upper-lids wearing designer wears and ties, discussing numbers and politics? how do you joke with others who cannot remember the sound of laughters?