Tossing and turning a lot at night don’t
mean you've had enough of sleep and don’t require more. This is true especially
if you’re about a decade or two late of being a member of the baby boomer generation.
Senior adults need a greater quantity of snooze,
this is what researchers in the University of California are saying. Rather than
deep ones, older folks need longer hours of slumber that can help improve mental health and other cognitive processing activities. The absolute minutes of sleep that they get has considerable impact on how they perform during their
waking moments.
In contrast, young adults can do
a lot better if they have quality or deeper zzzs, which can result to better memory
and brain functions.
***
“My brain’s totally dried up,” Tio Jee smiled as he extended the makeshift trundle of his
favorite rattan daybed. “If what you say is true, then I think I should lie
down for a while. Maybe I’ll remember some of the adventures we’ve had when we
were younger.”
“We were never young,” Brother Juan laughed.
“And what adventures are you talking about?”
“I was, once. But you, and the rest of you,”
Tio Jee motioned with his hands, “were born old.”
“Partly true.
We were Gilgamesh, rushing to build the great Uruk walls at the age of
30 because...”
“Because life's too short?" Tio Jee frowned.
Juan smiled, sat down in a corner and grabbed a
dusty Damman guitar.
“Young acting like old, now old still acting
old---” said Tio Jee. “Naknampopok! You were just like those doddering
fools you read in books.”
“Most beautiful mistake.”Juan adjusted some strings. “I
don’t regret doing it a bit even now that I see oldness as a natural function of age rather than a notion of being.
“So much in a hurry to grow old and make a
literary compression of life, so much in a hurry...”
Juan played a few lines of Recuerdos de la
Alhambra. He stopped suddenly, remembering something, and said, “If there’s one
thing that wasn’t compromised with all those years of acting old was our viri--
Tio Jee, Tio…?”
The old man was sleeping like baby.
