Idleness and Inactivity

There comes a time in the lives of those who live longer, when for one reason or another, they must alter their activities. Things change, and people change, and personnel and procedures change. There is no man-made job that continues always and forever, and no earthly tenure that is unending. And those who live out the lengthening years of life always face the prospect of altered activities and of a possible time of retirement.

Men vary from feeling that retirement is a hoped-for utopia to feeling that it is an intolerable inactivity. But a change of responsibilities does not mean that one should sit on the side lines. There is infinitely much undone. There is infinitely much to be done. There is much need of mature judgement, mature emotions, of the experience and steadying leadership that those older can give to those younger.

One of the functions of the mature mind, said Maurice Linden, is “keeping alive human judgement, of maintaining human skills . . .” And it isn’t reasonable to become accustomed to work and its great good, all the long length of life, and then be altogether content without it. Whenever life is organized around idleness or inactivity there is an emptiness. Life always asks of us a certain amount of flexibility, and inevitably it always asks of us adjustments to the changing years of time, but it does not ask of us the retirement to idleness, but only to altered activity.

“The old retain their intellectual powers provided their interests and inclination continue,” said Cicero. “What one has, that one ought to use; . . . to each is allotted its appropriate quality . . . and so the feebleness of children, as well as the high spirit of youth, the soberness of mature years, and the ripe wisdom of . . . age⎯all have a certain natural advantage which should be (garnered) in its proper season.” And so long as a person feels useful, is useful and flexible and enjoys willing work⎯he is more likely to lengthen the health and happiness of his life.