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Sunday, May 2, 2010

Percy Miller -Centenarian

Percy Miller is leading the world in aging more gracefully!

Last year I wrote about Percy Miller, an Englishman living in Moraira, Spain. Percy was born in Plymouth, England, and at the time I wrote he had celebrated his 102nd birthday by driving to the office of the newspaper to have his picture taken.

He celebrated with a birthday party that included music and ice-cream and cake, and dancing. Percy danced at his party because his great love was dancing. Unfortunately he didn’t dance with any young ladies his own age because there were no young ladies the same age as he.

I was particularly impressed by his story because he seems to be leading the way for the new senior citizen. In the past we always saw pictures of centenarians sitting in their wheelchairs in very frail conditions, but increasingly people are more active and are more engaged with life. We are learning that life does not end until it ends. People are open to constantly learning new skills, the computer being the prime example.

Artists, who have long been “the antennae of our society” as one prominent author describes them, live longer lives in the sense that they are more functional, more independent, and more aware of the changes that life brings about. This is mainly because of their art and the interaction that that promotes with the public. They are constantly learning new things, and that is the key.

If we live our lives in a static fashion, then we will not progress, and if we do not progress then we must regress. Staying still is not an option, as time moves on, and with it change happens. We get left behind, which is a natural thing anyway because of the pace of change. For instance there was a time when I was on the cutting edge of change. I made it a point to acquaint myself with all the cutting-edge stuff.

Then, it seems in the mere blink of a eye things moved ahead by a quantum leap. I thought people were still using “My Space” and “Messenger” but the new flavour is now Twitter and FaceBook and iPhones and God-knows-what. I have been left behind, never to catch up again. We need to learn something new everyday, otherwise we are simply waiting to die.

I remember a time when to see a man typing brought about suspicious looks and suppressed laughter. Now, if you can’t type, you are nowhere. For Percy Miller, he has had to keep his sanity through wave after wave of amazing changes. Our children, and in many cases we as parents have only known a world that included the internet and mobile phones with sms and photo options and internet banking and the thousand and one aspects of modern living. Not so for anyone remotely Percy Miller’s age.

The obverse side of all this is that while change has come quickly bringing so much in new technology, in the actual blink of an eye we sometimes have to get accustomed to do without, such as the effect of a power failure on most computerised offices. That leads to masses of people standing around asking, now what do we do? The eruption of the Iceland volcano left people across the world without air transport. Heathrow Airport in London, one of the busiest in the world came to a grinding halt and stayed that way for over five days. That was absolutely impossible to contemplate, but it actually happened to Heathrow and a great many other airports in Europe.

To have lived such a long time, and to have enjoyed reasonably good health is a true blessing. To have survived through so many of life’s changes must surely be an intensely rewarding experience. I’m sure our Percy does not agree with everything that has taken place in the name of prosperity and technological advancement, but to have been there through it all and to have topped the One Hundred mark with such spirit and gusto is an inspiration, particularly to me, and most probably to everyone.

Now, I take great pleasure to say that Percy Miller has celebrated his 103rd birthday. In the course of the previous year his health has taken a marked downturn, so he was pictured sitting down, and he most probably did not drive himself to the picture shoot. I personally wish him well in this his 104th year. I wish him also belatedly a Very Happy 103rd Birthday, and that I believe he will find many more years to be even more interesting.

Copyright © 2010 Eugene Carmichael