“But why, you ask me, should this tale be told To men grown old, or who are growing old?
It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
What, then? Shall we sit idly down and say
The night hath come; it is no longer day?
The night hath not yet come; we are not quite
Cut off from labor by the failing light;
Something remains for us to do or dare;
Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear.
For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.”
—Longfellow: Morituri Salutamus.
63Old age depends largely upon the attitude of men toward the whole of life. Old age is not a joke nor a bore nor a trial nor a calamity, though it may be any one of these as all of life may be. But what needs to be stressed is that old age has no content in itself apart from the whole of life. Old age may be as nothing else a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven where faith and hope may meet and love crown all. But little can come to old age that was not in and throughout life. Alas for the old age of the self-centered and self-serving! If life have built walls that shut out, these cannot be razed by age, which will forever have made itself captive.
The crown of old age is a term that trips lightly from our tongues. Are we 64not in danger of forgetting that there must be something to crown? For in old age inheres no magic to redeem and transfigures all that has gone before. Old age purges the precious metal of life’s substance of its debasing dross, but the precious substance must be there to be purged. Age, like happiness, is neither to be sought nor evaded. It is a by-product of life rather than life’s end. Not the aim nor goal of life, but the way of life must it be.
In the matter of reverencing old age, we rest historically upon the firmest Jewish foundation. For the Jew as no other man before or after him taught the world how to magnify childhood and to glorify old age,—to rise up before the hoary head and honor the face 65of the old man. And this revering solicitude for the aged is still one of the marks of Jewish life. Jewish teaching has urged and Jewish practice has confirmed the truth that blessing rests upon that home in which the aged have found shelter.
Indeed, one is almost disposed to hold that there is a possibility of overdoing reverence for old age as old age, of becoming indiscriminating in the honor which one metes out to the hoary head. If the people of Israel have erred in any part with respect to old age, they have revered the aged head too much irrespective of the head and the man. I would not if I could break with that fine tradition, but, sometimes, it were well to ask whether old age is to be respected 66as a virtue in itself, whether length of days should be regarded as a merit apart from what has gone before. Old age is judged compassionately on the principle that nothing but the good should be spoken touching the dead or the nearly dead.
One is sometimes moved to believe that if the aged are unhappy it is because age brings with it not only opportunity for quiet meditation and serene retrospect, but the necessity of thinking about the great issues of life. And many of us have never learned how to think. We have put off the evil day of taking thought upon life so that, when it at last comes, its imminence appalls. Men and women put off their questions and their problems to the end of life 67and when the end is nearly come, they lack the strength and will to think them through. The need of solutions is then cruelly pressed upon unpracticed and undisciplined minds.
Though I ask the question, how to grow old and how not to grow old, are we not, if we will be frank, more interested in the question how not to grow old than how to grow old? In the question, pressing a little farther, how to seem not to grow old rather than how not grow old? Seeming not to grow old may be attained by artificial means. Not to grow old may be achieved by inward grace alone. Need it be said that no one is ever deceived by external methods of averting age, nor is any one profited or helped save perhaps the 68chemist and the dye-maker, save the babblers and praters of new substitutes for old faiths? Whosoever thinks of old age aright, whosoever has fitted himself for the dignity of the burden of many days will resort neither to renewing cosmetics nor novel cults as a refuge from old age.
Men speak of the penalties of old age and penalties there are, but what of its rewards, rich and abundant and wondrous, richer indeed in most cases than its desert? The old, because they are old, are treated for the most part as if they were travelers returning richly laden with stores of varied treasures from a voyage over remotest seas to some strange and wondrous spot. Old age in itself is no more a reward 69than a penalty. And yet what rewards, paraphrasing Shakespeare, accompany old age, and how fitting that these rewards, friendship-bearing, honor-bringing, should wait upon what might elsewise be life’s melancholy end!
The truth is that old age is not a period of rewards nor penalties in themselves. It is a time of duties, as every period offers life’s cup with duties brimming o’er. Duties there are,—but there are privileges beyond estimate. And the privilege of privileges is to offer an example to others in all ways and most of all in the way of facing life with serenity. Finer far for old age to claim its duties than to enjoy its privileges for the old ought to shun being pitied as weak and seek rather to be admired 70as strong and honored as serene.
When old age has the grace of exalting duty and subordinating privilege, it ceases to be the period of mute resignation. From one point of view, it is the age of resignation, for one wittingly resigns in part what death is wholly to take away, but, be it made clear, resignation is not inaction, renunciation is not willlessly surrendering torpor. These things imply will, action, choice, not merely an awaiting of the end without murmur or complaint. For old age waits not but wills; old age surrenders not but whilst life is renders return for life.
While different types of laws seem to obtain for youth, maturity and old age, 71these yet are one and one spirit seems to pervade and dominate all. Let youth hold high its aim and pursue high aims through holy means. Let maturity serve and achieve and above all achieve only that it may serve with unimpaired admiration and undimmed ideals. And let old age be nobly wise and unafraid and unselfish to the end!
Much, if not everything, of the content of old age depends on the things for which one cares. If one care for the things that cannot survive youth or middle age, whose value is inevitably lessened with the flight of years, then old age must become barren and empty. Whether your old age is to be void and meaningless depends almost wholly not upon what you have and care for at 72seventy or eighty, but what it was you sought to have at twenty, what you cared for at thirty, what you cherished at forty. Certain things may be harmless, even admirable in themselves, and yet are destined to be woefully disappointing if they are suffered to become the pursuits of a lifetime and men give themselves to things for which they cannot care when the years have multiplied.
Myopia may interfere with one’s zest for looking upon motion pictures, limbs may become too rheumatic for dancing, tragic............