On Aging

On Aging

These days whenever I participate in English training course I encounter an uncomfortable truth. It is that I am an old teacher. In other training courses such as computer training course, usually there are many teachers who are older than me but English training course is different. It is because general Elementary school teachers who are more than 40s tend to think teaching English is too much for them so that it is the best policy to evade it. Anyway, at least in English training course, I have to face the truth that I am an old teacher. Then I think to myself, what does it mean to be old? Why do I have to bring up age problem now?

In terms of aging, what I always worry about is not the fact that I'm getting older and older but the concern if I can't be mature for that age. For me, aging means I'm getting more mature. Just as long as I can be a better person than what I used to be, surely I welcome the years passing by me. I hate to mention it but... in English training courses sometimes my junior teachers are surprised at my English abilities. They say among old teachers so far they have never met such a competent trainee as me. (As far as vocabulary concerned, I think I'm above them. But in case of speaking, I might be inferior to them.) Then I answer to them it is because I've been living a life much longer than yours.

This year, age of 47(Korean counting) is passing me by. Every time I look in the mirror and find some more silvers on my head it forces me to accept a kind of reality. But if I'm growing up intellectually as well as emotionally corresponding to my age, what on earth is the problem?