In spite of the title, this article will really be on how not to grow
old, which, at my time of life, is a much more important subject. My
first advice would be to choose your ancestors carefully. Although both
my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my
other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the
flower of his youth at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three
grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can
only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a
disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off. A
great-grandmother of mine, who was a friend of Gibbon, lived to the age
of ninety-two, and to her last day remained a terror to all her
descendants.
My maternal grandmother, after having nine children who
survived, one who died in infancy, and many miscarriages, as soon as she
became a widow devoted herself to women’s higher education. She was one
of the founders of Girton College, and worked hard at opening the
medical profession to women. She used to tell of how she met in Italy an
elderly gentleman who was looking very sad. She asked him why he was so
melancholy and he said that he had just parted from his two
grandchildren. ‘Good gracious,’ she exclaimed, ‘I have seventy-two
grandchildren, and if I were sad each time I parted from one of them, I
should have a miserable existence!’ ‘Madre snaturale!,’ he replied. But
speaking as one of the seventy-two, I prefer her recipe. After the age
of eighty she found she had some difficulty in getting to sleep, so she
habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a.m. in reading popular
science. I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was
growing old. This, I think, is the proper recipe for remaining young. If
you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still
be effective, you will have no reason to think about the merely
statistical fact of the number of years you have already lived, still
less of the probable shortness of your future.
As regards health, I have nothing useful to say as I have little experience
of illness. I eat and drink whatever I like, and sleep when I cannot keep
awake. I never do anything whatever on the ground that it is good for health,
though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.
Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age.
One of these is undue absorption in the past. It does not do to live in
memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about friends
who are dead. One’s thoughts must be directed to the future, and to
things about which there is something to be done. This is not always
easy; one’s own past is a gradually increasing weight. It is easy to
think to oneself that one’s emotions used to be more vivid than they
are, and one’s mind more keen. If this is true it should be forgotten,
and if it is forgotten it will probably not be true.
The other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth in the hope of
sucking vigour from its vitality. When your children are grown up they
want to live their own lives, and if you continue to be as interested in
them as you were when they were young, you are likely to become a burden
to them, unless they are unusually callous. I do not mean that one
should be without interest in them, but one’s interest should be
contemplative and, if possible, philanthropic, but not unduly emotional.
Animals become indifferent to their young as soon as their young can
look after themselves, but human beings, owing to the length of infancy,
find this difficult.
I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong
impersonal interests involving appropriate activities. It is in this
sphere that long experience is really fruitful, and it is in this sphere
that the wisdom born of experience can be exercised without being
oppressive. It is no use telling grownup children not to make mistakes,
both because they will not believe you, and because mistakes are an
essential part of education. But if you are one of those who are
incapable of impersonal interests, you may find that your life will be
empty unless you concern yourself with your children and grandchildren.
In that case you must realise that while you can still render them
material services, such as making them an allowance or knitting them
jumpers, you must not expect that they will enjoy your company.
Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young,
there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to
fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in
the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has
to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and
has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is
somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it -so at least it
seems to me- is to make your interests gradually wider and more
impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life
becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human
existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained
within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over
waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the
waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break,
they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual
being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not
suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will
continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the
thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still
at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and
content in the thought that what was possible has been done.
[from “Portraits From Memory And Other Essays”]
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