This business of being old is bothering me. Yes, there are aches and fragilities and coughs and creaks and increasing physical ineptitude of all kinds. But in what really matters – love of what the brain can do and fascination with what it can never know, eagerness to learn, delight in new revelations of nature’s variety and man’s achievements, desire to be around forever to see what happens – I feel as I have always felt. It does not change.
Cicero, in his great essay on old age, is not entirely consoling when he writes: “It cannot be supposed that nature, after having wisely distributed to all previous periods of life their peculiar and proper enjoyments, should have neglected the last act of the human drama and left it destitute of suitable advantages.” That “last act” business intrudes ominously on the pleasing truth of the observation.
Perhaps, in face of the inevitable, it would be best to try and achieve serenity. That may now be the most appropriate ambition: withdrawal from the hurly-burly, contemplation, teaching and advising – like the elders at the Scaean Gate making available to those who seek the wisdom and insights acquired in life’s rich experience. Lao Tse’s saying, “Muddy waters left standing become clear,” hints how this may be possible. In youth and middle age, the stir and eternal bustle of life’s business leaves the waters of one’s inner life muddied. As age comes on, we discover that the activity and strivings which have brought achievement in the external world are useless in dealing with the inner life to which nature now bids us turn. I suppose it may all come down in the end to the Psalmist’s “Be still then and know that I am God.”
But I do not seem to be quite ready for serenity. Life’s stir and eternal bustle still hold a strong attraction. There seems so much left to do, not to mention a veritable infinity of marvels in the world left to experience. I have heard it said, and I have seen it written, that as one ages life gradually loses its savour. Thus far I have not found it so. It is claimed that to live for more than eighty or ninety years would be a burden and a bore. In good health I find that impossible to understand. Today still seems to me loaded with golden moments and what tomorrow will bring remains continually fascinating. So where is the burden and the boredom? I suppose a great deal depends on being in reasonably good health but given that fundamental blessing who would not choose to live forever, or near enough?
However old one is, life should always be filled with valuable things still to do – interesting unfinished business right to the end. I think there is truth in what I wrote recently to a friend after I found myself considerably slowed down by a bout of pneumonia: “I realise that one of the more insidious promptings of old age is not to bother much about anything anymore – whereas the essence of life is to bother very much about everything all the time!”
Well, it is all a dream anyway and our span indeed is sadly limited. In the art of writing and remembering, that might be the concluding task that one desires. There is a beautiful book by Frederic Prokosch called “Voices.” It is his autobiography, which was completed at the age of 75. It ends with the following passage: “I live in a valley below Grasse in a cottage enclosed by cypresses. Behind me loom the hills where the walls are perched in the sunlight. Below me flows the cold green canal of the river Singue. Every morning I look at the dew which clings to the olive trees and I wonder what strange new excitement the day will hold for me… My voyage is at an end. I think how glorious to grow old. But then I sit by the window and drink a cup of coffee and labour once again in my ceaseless struggle to produce a masterpiece. I am no longer afraid of loneliness or suffering or death. I see the wondrous faces of the past gathering around me and I hear once again the murmuring of voices in the night.”
Yes, that is a prospect which could enchant me. But not yet.
