Lengthening the Productive Period…

When we talk of the attitudes and opportunities of age, we are talking also to youth⎯for the years move swiftly from the younger to the later years of life⎯and it is, as Cicero said: “the honorable conduct of [youth] . . . that is rewarded by possessing influence at the last . . . If one has lived . . . well . . . the harvest . . . is wonderful.”

And now to look a moment at the brief span that could be called the productive period: a lot of life is used in getting started, and in the complexities of modern living it doesn’t seem probable that the period of preparation would soon be shortened. Indeed, we may look to its lengthening.

Since this is so, there comes a question as to whether or why we should shorten the period of productivity? When it takes so long to get started, should we discourage people from using their gifts and powers as long as possible? We could cite many examples of men who have lived long and have produced remarkably in their lengthening years of life; and since there are so many, many more, and that it is partly a matter of attitude and opportunity. “Use what you have,” said Cicero, “and whatever you may chance to be doing, do it with all your might . . . [with your] mind at full stretch like a bow, and never [give] in to . . . age by growing slack . . . For myself, I had rather be an old man a somewhat shorter time than an old man before my time.”

Contrast this with what Hugo Grotius, in his last words, unhappily said of himself: “I have spent my life laboriously doing nothing.”

“Life,” said Carlyle, “is not given us for the mere sake of living . . .”

All this, in summary, seems essentially to suggest: that there is urgent need for all the good things that all of us can do⎯for skills, for judgment, for experience, for education, for intelligent and mature attention to so much in so many places⎯world-wide⎯and that all of us are better off earnestly occupied. And the cut from activity to inactivity need not, perhaps, be so sharp, if men pursue their full powers to the best of their ability while yet they live in this life, and then move on to the great and limitless assurances and possibilities of everlasting life.

In the meaningful words of an eminent American: “Help us, O Lord, truly to live!”