WHEN YOU GET OLD

LONELINESS

What is LONELINESS? For me, it is just the state of a human’s mind. We seldom feel we are lonely. Yes. But how long do we feel that? A few days? A few hours? Is that long enough? We have family, we have friends, and we have those people we love. We do not have so called pro-long LONELINESS. Once we are with our family, when we are surrounded by friends, we feel so loved and this LONELINESS is gone.

SHOOTING

I love to go shooting alone. Especially when I go to those pagodas and temples, I want to spend time wisely. It is very cool and enchanted being under those religious shades. I even switch off my mobile phones during my shooting in these places. Surprised? Yes, after shooting, I sit, I stretch myself off and pray to Lord Buddha. I go every single corner of pagodas to make candid shots.

This man, I have come to know while I was shooting at one pagoda in Yangon. He was sitting at one corner and saw me making some shots through my lens. He was so curious and asked me what I was shooting. I showed him my camera LCD. He was so shocked and asked me, “Son, your equipment so good yea? You can see photo instantly, huh? Very nice thing. I have never seen such thing in my life.” Then we had a chat for some time. Sometimes, it’s relaxing to chat with such people. He is a retired army captain who is 82 years old. “I retired in 1990, son. I have no family, no relatives. So I spend my life here in this pagoda being a watchman, son. The pagoda trustees provide me food which is enough for me to survive. I need no money, son. But sometimes, I want family, I want friends and I want love. Without them, I feel quite boring and lonely, son.”

I wonder how long he is going to be lonely . . .

Have a nice weekend, my friend.

YE LWIN OO (MPS)

WHEN YOU GET OLD

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

~ William Butler Yeats ~

WILLIAM GOLD

Feel sad for him. But that’s life… And I like your color setting… CHEERS BRO…
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ WILLIAM GOLD >> Thanks for the visit and comment, bro. Sadly, I shoot with JPEG format. So I could not play with the colors that much… Anyway, glad that you like it…
Dana

Great pensive photo but very sad! You taking a photo sounds like meditation to me, everything in life we can use to meditate, the way you describe it, is single pointed focusness, like in meditation!!! Great and Sadhu…
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Dana >> Thanks a lot, my friend. It is something what I feel. It’s a philosophy and it is life…
Gina Khine

ေလာကႀကီးမွာ… အိုဇာတာ မေကာင္းမွာကို အေၾကာက္ဆံုးပဲ… အထူးသျဖင့္ သက္ႀကီး ႐ြယ္အို အဘိုးအဘြားေတြ ဒုကၡ ေရာက္ေနတာ ေတြ႕ရင္ ရင္ထဲမွာ ပိုမေကာင္းဘူး… ကိုယ္ခ်င္းစာ ၾကၫ့္မိတာပါ… ဒီအဘုိးကို ၾကၫ့္ရတာ က်န္းမာေရးေတာ့ ေကာင္းေနေသးပံု ပါပဲ…ေတာ္ပါေသးရဲ႕
Lek

Oh… So sad for this story!
Uncle S Win

Bravo! A very good one. Your picture instantly feel and share us “Than Wai Ga Ta Yar”.
More over sitting position of old man holding a strong walking stick reflects many meaningful things.
Thant Thant

It’s sad and makes me think of my grandfather who passed away in last December.
I think it is better to have a good and warm family for everybody…
စုလတ္

Nice story and nice shooting. Bravo my bro!!
Soul

That a good pic, bro YLO…
http://www.stanleykay.com Stanley Kay

He had a moment of warm when he talked with you I believe he no longer felt lonely at the moment. Bro, it is great to take photo that touch us.. Cheers
http://www.padonma.com Myo Thaw Tun

He is 1928 born. Same age with my late grandpa. I think you can dig the history from him by asking about his life. I am glad that he is staying in our country. If he was in Singapore, he has to work in food court to clean the tables and keep the plates for his survival. :’(

Anyway, thanks for the another “Picture told the Story” brother. :))
Su Hnin

I feel sorry for him… sad story, nice photo and great poem!!
Ko Min

I feel sorry for him n thinking about myself what will happen to me at the age of 80 over… your photography blog makes alarming me… love this one so much… Cheers Bro.
Zin Mar

I also wonder how long he is going to be lonely…
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Gina Khine >> မမေ၀ တစ္ေယာက္ အိုဇာတာ ေကာင္းပါ ေစသားဗ်ာ။ အသက္ႀကီး ေပေသာ္လဲ ခ်ာတိတ္ေလးမ်ား ၀ိုင္း၀ိုင္းလည္ လို႔ အထီးက်န္မႈ မွ ေ၀းပါေစေသာ္၀္…။

@ Lek >> Thanks for stopping by, my friend. Where have you been?

@ Uncle S Win >> I have many of such stories, uncle. Because when I go shooting, I spent a few hours there and always come across with old people…

@ စုလတ္ >> ေက်းဇူးဗ်ာ ညီမ…။

@ Soul >> Thanks, Bro Soul…

@ Stanley Kay >> I believe he felt the FRIENDLINESS during that moment and I am glad for that…

@ Myo Thaw Tun >> Yes, I am sad to see those people of my Grandpa age working so hardly at Hawker centers here. Ain’t their lives be better?

@ Su Hnin >> Sometimes, seeing such people makes me realize that how lucky I am…

@ Ko Min >> Lolz… You still can find a wife bro. You are still young… Don’t be too choosy then…

@ Zin Mar >> Until he leave this world, I believe…
Eward

How sad to see old people being alone. Did you know why didn’t he go to Home for aged.
I afraid of getting old & if no one beside me.
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Eward >> Thanks for the add, bro. I didn’t ask why he was not going to Home for Aged. May be he can’t afford to pay. To get a space at Home for Aged is not FREE, Bro. You need some connections too…
Gina Khine

ေပးတဲ႔ဆုနဲ႔ ေဝးပါေစ ေသာ္ဝ္… အဲလိုဆုမ်ိဳး ေပးစရာလား လုိ႔… မျငိမ္းခ်မ္း လိုက္တာေနာ္… အဟင္႔…။
http://www.mmgamers.com Poke’Freaks

I’m really touched by your photo shoot and article. Funny how I’d always been reminding myself that I should spend more time with my parents who are getting older and yet almost always spending my time on video games and work. It makes me kinda happy and nostalgic when my mother watch me play video games with a smile or when I chat with my father, who don’t have much real teeth left, how we used to play racing games on Super Nintendo back in the days

I’m always sympathetic towards old people and old beggars since I was a child and always donate to them as much as I can. A few years ago, there was an old beggar couple near Myay Pa Dar Thar park that I always donate money to and then suddenly there was only old man left and his wife was dead. I almost cried when I heard that from him and he also disappear a few months later. I can’t seem to find those old beggar couples near Hle Dann these days either and I’ll never know what happened to them. Sometimes, I checked my bodyweight at those weight meter just to donate money.

Even though some kids I know also have sympathy towards old people, they always miss their chance to donate money to them since they were riding their own car and I find it really sad. Whether we should donate money to beggars or not is still debatable but I think old people should be an exception and I was just expressing my feelings towards them.

Sorry for long comment :)
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Poke’Freaks >> Thanks for your long and considerate comment, my friend… Most of us normally donate money to old people whenever we happen to see them… But not all people…
http://www.alainsojourner.com Alain

Hey there! You remember me?
What’s your email?
I wanna tell you something. :)
Thanks.
Phyu

<3 the photo and the poem… touches my heart
well done bro =]
Pon Gyi

bro, i’ve looked at ur pics & written comments this evening… but after i took a look at this pic & read the background story, i don’t know what to write as a comment… no exaggeration… the story made me shed tears… i always feel sad & uncomfy whenever i see those kindda abandoned old ppl… actually, there r times in my life that i feel like i’m all alone… sometimes, i feel like i’ve been taken out of my family whenever i think like i’m struggling alone while my family is chilling together at home… even a person like me who’s away from family juz for a while feel like this, how will that old man feel??? honestly, i don’t know how to express my sympathy for him…

after looking at the pic, i’d like the say that the essence of the pic is nothing but his gloomy smile… like he said, he looks well & dresses well… & he’s smiling in the pic but the way he smile is some what gloomy… i’m really impressed that u’ve perfectly captured it… secondly, i luv the appearance of those dark clouds in the sky which bolsters the loneliness of the aged man… & last but not least is the tone u used… it simply stresses the whole aspect of the pic… seriously, I SALUTE YOU for this pic… that’s the best candid shot after “The Survivor”… u’ve juz made another milestone… ;D
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Phyu >> I am thankful for your comment, sis. It was just a candid shot…

@ Pon Gyi >> For sure, it won’t reach the level of “THE SURVIVOR”. THE SURVIVOR is a rare candid shot which is very hard for someone to get with all those misty surroundings. However, this shot is all about Philosophy, my sis. We all struggle here and there with our family in a distance. Sometimes, we should realize how lucky we are having those caring and loving family. We should recall those joyous childhood memories and how privileged we are. Last but not least, we have those HELPING HANDS of our parents who tirelessly supporting us all the way…
http://photography.zinonline.com Soe

He may be down but he aint out! :)
He has a look of strength on his face.. underneath the lines of life..
Excellent job, bro!
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Soe >> You’re right bro. We can see his strength from his face. Thanks for your comment and visit…
Luke

A picture tells a story, more meaningful than a story…
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Luke >> Thks for the visit and compliment, bro…

WHEN YOU GET OLD

LONELINESS

SHOOTING

WHEN YOU GET OLD

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