It's not all in the genes after all...

JAKARTA (JP): I was taking my daily walk around the lake in my new housing complex, when I met my sister on her bicycle. She had just come back from one of her Tai Chi classes. We had moved to the new development complex for longevity's sake -- in hope of fresh air and to be free of noise and other pollution.

"So you are bicycling now?" I asked her.

"Yes we have to adopt a new lifestyle to keep fit," was her reply. "There are lots of exciting things to come in the future and we have to live long enough to see it all happen."

"Why worry," I commented, "Mother will soon be 97 and auntie Aline is 93. It's all in our genes, so we may live longer than we would like."

"No," she said, "that's what we always thought, wasn't it? But longevity really depends on our food and lifestyle -- and maybe also the magic potions we drink. The health supplements now so much on display at the drugstores may have their share too. Haven't you read in the papers that the minister of health has said that he is going to distribute good food? He promises that by the year 2018, Indonesians will have grown to an average of 1.75 meters -- a 10 percent increase over the present average."

"It's not in the genes, I tell you, it's the food. If its true, we soon will have our own basketball players who can slam- dunk the balls into the baskets, just like the Harlem Globetrotters," she concluded.

Wow, that's exciting, I thought. So, soon our future tennis players would not have to add a few inches to their rackets like Michael Chang does. But then I panicked. "What if my own grandsons and granddaughters become so tall. Wouldn't that mean that I'd get a stiff neck while talking to them?"

But my sister replied: "Well, you will get a stiff neck anyway, because we'll soon get the highest tower in the world in Jakarta. And maybe we'll have cross-eyes by then from looking at the longest bridge. As for your grandchildren, don't worry. Give them a chair and ask them to sit down when they talk to you."

"But don't forget that we are in the process of shrinking because of osteoporosis," I added. "So we'll need a footstool for them so they can get even lower for us to talk to. Anyway, I feel sorry for Mother, because she always boasted about the longevity gene in her family. Her grandmother and her aunts all became so old. But why are mostly women living to be so old? Oh, by the way, I was just thinking that Napoleon and Deng Xiao Ping may not have been fed well by their parents. That's why they were so short."

"Right," my sister said, "and Helmuth Kohl probably has gotten the right amount of Frankfurters and Berliners from his mother!"

My sister then rode away again on her bike, swift and sure almost like an athlete from the Tour de France. I walked back home and thought that while we are waiting for that tower to be finished and for our grandchildren to grow up to reach the two meter mark, we should not stop hoping. We should hope for scientists to come up with a new finding of a grain, a vegetable, a fruit or maybe some kind of exercise, that can make people become peace-loving and non-violent. Although we may have to get ready for our departure from this world, we can still hope that it will become a better place to live in for the next generations to come.

-- Myra Sidharta