Old is gold.

I was travelling to school on the bus today, and opposite me sat a man about 65 years old. I'm going to henceforth call him OMOM - Old Man Opposite Me. The first thing I noticed about OMOM is that he had a brace around his neck. OMOM had to turn his body to fully face another old man he was conversing with because of that brace he wore.

OMOM was cheerfully chatting away oblivious to the fact that I was observing him. "I surely wouldn't be of such a cheerful disposition with a god-awful brace, such as that, around my neck!", I thought to myself. I also noticed that a huge NIKON camera hung around his neck. A camera bag was strapped over him arm and a tripod leant against him. "A photographer of nature", he calls himself.

As the bus got a little noisier, the other man asks OMOM to speak up louder explaining that he's hard of hearing. "Welcome to the club", laughed OMOM. "I'm blind in my left eye."

I didn't hear the rest of the conversation as I spent the next couple of moments feeling stunned, amazed, awed, flabbergasted?!? However, I got off at my stop with the biggest smile on my face and a weird tugging at my heart-strings.

Here we are, the youth of today - the so-called trend-setters. We ignore certain people on purpose with the two eyes we have. We are sometimes too busy to lend our two ears to listen to a friend's problems. We think it's hilarious that someone's taken a hard fall instead of using our two hands to help lift him up.

And yet, here was OMOM, making the best of what he had.

Today, I was truly inspired.