You…grown Older…

“There is an old man up there ahead of you that ought to know. He looks somewhat like you, talks like you, walks like you. He has your nose, your eyes, your chin: and whether he loves you or hates you, respects you or despises you, whether he is angry or comfortable, whether he is miserable or happy, depends on you. For you made him. He is you, grown older.” ¹

This reminder has within it both precaution and promise depending upon which direction we choose to take. “We live forward, we understand backwards,” ² said William James. And yet we are not altogether at a loss to know, along broad lines, where any road will lead. There are many who have traveled almost every road that we might choose to take; there are many who have done most things that we might choose to do, and we can look to the principles that have been proved and the results that have been realized in the lives that others have lived.

Every young person, for example, can know that patience, preparation, learning and working are essential for a fullness of life. Any observer, of the present or the past, may know that cleanliness of body, of mind and of morals is kind and comfortable; that uncleanliness is coarsening and corrosive; that standards are essential; that personal responsibility is real; that law sustains life: that there are consequences for every act; that “wickedness never was happiness;” and that the commandments are founded on eternal facts.

If we live one way we get one result _ if we live another way we get another result. We ought to be smart enough, realistic enough, observant and alert enough to know this, forward as well as backwards.

“There is an old man up there ahead of you that you ought to know…Whether he is miserable or happy, depends on you. For you made him. He is you, grown older.”