Life is worth a bit of suffering because it's worth living

By Yi Woo-won

While admitting that I am a feeble nonagenarian with disabilities, I still want to be my own master. As long as I can rise to my feet and move around, I do not want to be a burden to my children or to be imprisoned in a nursing home. Therefore, to maintain the status quo and stay healthy, I've been walking regularly for these last few years. Walking is now a daily routine and a hobby because I enjoy it.

I wake up around sunrise, change into casual wear and leave home to start walking. Last year, I walked along the Nakdong River. But I altered the course this year for a change and to avoid a little traffic hazard on the way. The new route doesn't have any streets to cross. It's a straight uphill path along a small, quiet village from home, then a downhill sidewalk to the little park. I stroll around the park, doing some stretching and push-ups. My step-counter on my belt reads close to 4,000 steps when I come home, feeling refreshed and energized after about an hour of walking.

There is no doubt in my mind that walking, regardless of age, is the best exercise to improve and manage overall health. Also I know now that walking is easy and absolutely harmless to joints and knees. In addition, I believe strongly from my experience that walking can lower risks of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, cardiac arrest and much more as researchers assert. After two years of strenuous regimen, my knee pain is now gone, my legs are tight with muscles and even my age-old stooped shoulders are sort of straightened.

My next task of the daily routine is tending plant families around the house. Coming home from a walk, I go straight to my little gardens, watering them if they look thirsty. As I do, I always think they know I'm caring for them because they have feelings, even if they don't respond like house pets. Plants and flowers are great partners for humans and they are immeasurably beneficial to us. We might just think we are caring for them, but they're really caring for us.

The daisies and cosmos, my two favorite flowers, are now growing from seeds in the little vacant lot outside my home. I just can't wait for July and through September to see the cheerful flowers blooming in various colors. The gorgeous flowers would certainly delight the eyes of my neighbors and pedestrians as they did last year. The garden is a little magic space where I feel so at peace, stress-free and relaxed as I crouch among plants, scratching the dirt with a hoe. Because of that, I like the old Chinese proverb: “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything.”

My third daily routine is surfing the internet for mental exercise. In recent years, I have occasionally encountered memory loss, such as forgetting the spelling of easy, common words and the names and phone numbers of close friends. Then, I learned from somewhere that mental exercise could keep the brain sharp and slow down age-related memory deterioration.

So, after breakfast, I sit at my laptop screen for daily world news. I usually stay with Yahoo Japan in Japanese because the media is fast and all-inclusive, plus Japanese editions of major Korean dailies have domestic news. Then I turn to a few U.S. sites, searching for interesting events or stories. Lastly, if I'm still unwearied, I visit Weibo.com, a Chinese website, and browse through the pages of hot topics.

I became fond of learning foreign languages when I first took Chinese for a semester as a freshman in high school. I was then learning English for a primary foreign language, but I thought Chinese language was fascinating. By virtue of a passionate interest in learning foreign languages, I pledged myself to master the three languages, including Japanese, whatever the cost. I was a high school senior when the Korean War broke out and I was lucky to be appointed as a liaison (interpreter) officer. Although I was neither confident nor competent in any one of the three languages, they were incredibly useful in performing my duties in the war.

Yi Woo-won (yiwoowon1988@gmail.com) lives in Waegwan, North Gyeongsang Province, and has been writing since 1986.