Sun Kim on Aging

From John Leland's terrific book : Happiness Is a Choice You Make (Hint : when choosing what to remember, keep the happy memories)

At the sprawling Korean American Senior Center at Flushing-Queens which serves 1300 people on a typical day, a woman named Sun Kim, 85, had some advice for me : "Don't stay home," she said. "Learn something." Her own education had been interrupted when her country was invaded by the North. When I asked her what young people should learn from their elders, she scoffed at the idea. "Your generation is better than my generation. So you have nothing to learn from me," she said. "You have more opportunities, so we can learn from your generation because I didn't have the opportunity to learn because of the war. It's not a trauma. My daughters went to school and got educations. But I think I could have learned more."

Leland continues : I expected to find nostalgia or longing for the countries of their birth. American culture has a reputation for disregarding its elders. But I found the opposite. No one I met wanted to go back home because life for elders was harder there unless you were rich. So they jammed, elbow to elbow, at long, fluorescent-lit tables for hot meals and bingo and read newspapers in their native language. Few spoke English. A woman named "Kyun Qin", who followed her daughter from Hong Kong in the 1960's said she didn't like the way America treated its elderly people but then promptly reversed herself. "To be honest, the American government has done a better job than the Chinese government," she said. She received almost $1000 a month in food stamps and supplemental security income and paid a little more than $200 a month for a subsidized apartment. "It's just about enough."

On my list : Bonnie Ware (end of life care nurse) : "Top Five Regrets of the Dying"