The little, simple joys

It was a Thursday afternoon, and the Physiotheraphy room just barely opened its doors to the first after-lunch patients. I was one of them.

As always, I drearily took my seat at the warm-up hand cycle. My eyes could barely hold up the siesta syndrome. Then the corner of my eye caught a red flash:

A physiotherapist (a female) was communicating with an elderly man, who was obviously hard of hearing. She patiently spoke to him in Teochew and instructed him to try stand straight and catch a ball.

And that was when my eyes were directed to an elderly lady, whom I later confirmed as the old man's wife, whose face was radiating with joy. Her wrinkled face folded into a potrait of joy as she threw the red ball to her old man, who was to catch it. And when he did, the world's happiness seemed to reside on that sole face in a Singapore hospital.

Whenever the old, feeble man succeeded in catching that red ball, that old lady clapped her hands and squealed with delight, her eyes glistening with a simple, sincere joy of the small gifts that life presents.

Does it only take age to instill in us the capacity to enjoy such small pleasures? The period between the end of innocence (childhood) and the beginning of wisdom (old age), is where we reside, a valley of cynicism and gloom.

Uncle T