On Old Age

As the years come and go, increasingly there is concern and consideration for old age. Youth and age endlessly have both come in for comment. In a sense, the comparisons and appraisals are somewhat pointless, because we have so little choice between the two. Either we die young or we grow old. We live through youth if we are fortunate; and if more fortunate, we realize the longer years of life. Of all who have considered the subject none perhaps has done so more significantly than Cicero, from whose observations on old age we select some scattered sentences: “Fools impute their… frailties and guilt to old age,” he said. But “the fact is that the blame for all complaints of that kind is to be charged to character, not to a particular time of life: unreason and churlishness cause uneasiness at every time of life” and “men… who have no resources in themselves… find every age burdensome.” “There is a quiet, pure, and cultivated life which produces a calm and gentle old age.” The qualities “best adapted to [it] are culture and active exercise of the virtues.” And “if they have been maintained at every period… the harvest they produce is wonderful:…” the old, he said, “remember everything that interests them… and retain their intellects well enough, if only they keep their minds active and fully employed.” Nor does he who is old “miss the bodily strength of a young man any more than as a young man [he] missed the strength of a bull or an elephant… We must look after our health, use moderate exercise, take just enough food and drink to recruit, but not to overload, our strength. Nor is it the body alone that must be supported, but the intellect and soul much more.” And “the harvest of old age is… the memory and rich store of blessings laid up earlier in life. It is the honorable conduct of early days that is rewarded by possessing influences at the last.” And “it is not likely, if [nature] has written the rest of the play well, that she has been careless about the last act like some idle poet.” The old have what the young wish they had; “the one wishes to live long; the other has lived long.” “Enjoy [the] blessing when you have it; when it is gone, don’t wish it back… The course of life is fixed, and nature admits of its being run but in one way, and only once; and to each part of our life there is something specially seasonable.”* Thank God for the lengthening years of life, and for the blessed assurance of eternal continuance.