By Georgie Bright Kunkel

As one gets older with no regular career responsibilities people often remark, “Oh, it’s nice you keep busy.” That is after I mention my busy life. I reply that I am not just keeping busy. I am actively involved in life. Why is it that retired people are considered out of the loop? It is as if life stops after your formal work life is ended. It is time to find ways to integrate the age groups.

You have heard me complain about children cooped up in four walls all day and the problems involving big city segregation. The attempt at forming neighborhood communication is a step in the right direction. There are perks in knowing your neighbors. I try to know mine but neighborhood visiting evidently has gone out of style. Life is so busy these days that there doesn’t seem to be enough time for that. I am fortunate in having neighbors that I contact occasionally. I am not afraid to knock on doors and say hello.

Life is so filled with distractions and worries. TV ads bombard us with health potions that we must have it seems. A trip to the local supplement store is an eye opener. I didn’t have any idea that there were so many varieties of vitamin E, for example.

After all the years I have taken vitamin pills then I find that it is best to get these vitamins from the foods that they naturally exist in. Duh. I don’t remember taking vitamin pills when I was a child. But I had access to local vegetables and fruits and meat without any worry that I would be getting food that was not pure.

As to keeping busy. I don’t believe that any other country in the world focuses on keeping busy like the people in our country do. I adored it in Italy where people took two hours for lunch. Every city square was filled with friends having a break together. And I learned about the Ugly American. The clerks in the stores resented that we US tourists expected everyone to speak English. We are admired and resented all in the same breath, as it were.

Luckily I have traveled enough that I now don’t need to venture far from home anymore. My fellow still loves to travel and has just returned from visiting the South Pacific where he served during WWII. What an experience, visiting the area which was once bombed so that not even much vegetation was left and finding lush growth all over the island. Most of the abandoned equipment was removed by the Chinese but one or two reminders of WWII are still there. The island is dotted with caves where the Japanese hid during the war. It took some time before all of those in hiding felt it safe to come out into the world again.

If you have watched the recent series on the Civil War you have an idea of the devastation that such conflict brings to society. What a terrible loss of young, mostly male, lives leaving women widowed or without the chance of finding a mate. In earlier times people lived in remote tribes but even then there was tribal warfare over territory. With the world becoming overcrowded it is a challenge to find ways to share it without power struggles ending in violent conflict.

Each one of us on earth has an agenda. Youth thinks it is indestructible. In middle age we think we have solved all our problems. Then we enter the elder years hoping that we can live comfortably as long s possible. Life is mysterious and wonderful, right?

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a freelance writer who can be reached at gnkunkel@comcast.net or 206-935-8663.