I find it hard to accept that old age has come upon me. Life still is sweet and might go on forever so far as I am concerned since there is so much more to experience and discover and enjoy. The fact is that I am addicted to life and its multitudinous attractions and have no particular wish to go into rehab to cure myself of this addiction.
Who would not want this journey lit by wonders and surprises to go on and on if only to see what new marvels wait beyond the next turn in the road and the next?
Take, for instance, the discoveries which every day are being made revealing new truths about the universe and man’s infinite potential in it – with the pace of discovery accelerating all the time. Who would not want forever to be part of that never-ending search to see what happens next?
But, sadly, it doesn’t happen that way. At 80, reluctantly but realistically, one must contemplate journey’s end. About this Shakespeare is depressing – he describes a progression which leads inexorably towards “second childishness and mere oblivion/Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” I prefer Cicero in his great essay on old age: “It cannot be supposed that nature after having wisely distributed to all the 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.”
But what role should one desire? Might it be best to struggle to the last to aspire and achieve? Perhaps still one should go on striving as one did in youth and maturity “to fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of work well done” and, of course, with a fair amount of pleasurable activity also. But a moment’s reflection reveals that that is hardly credible. The vigour and ambition of youth and middle age are needed for that; to force such things beyond their time is ridiculous and depressing.
Neuroticism among the old becomes commonplace when age is dreaded and all sorts of efforts, however absurd, are made to preserve a youthful appearance and pursue youthful activities. There is no more embarrassing and depressing sight than old men and women desperately trying to recapture what has flown a long, long time ago.
To achieve serenity is a more appropriate ambition: withdrawal from the hurly-burly, contemplation, teaching – like the elders at the Scaean Gate making available to those who seek wisdom and insights acquired in life’s previous 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 stirrings 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 Psalmists’ “Be still then and know that I am God.”
And yet – to give up completely the satisfactions of trying to make a difference in the world of active players still seems hard to bear. Perhaps some lines in TS Eliot’s East Coker might yield the answer: “As we grow older/The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated/ Of dead and living…/Old men ought to be explorers.” In the end might it still be possible to combine an active and eager exploration of new achievements with a serenity which deepens and grows quiet as age gathers to a close?
In the art of writing and remembering, that might be the way one seeks.
There is a beautiful book by Frederic Prokosch called Voices. It is his autobiography, 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.”
One must have created for oneself a very good day indeed to have so beautiful a prospect of the night. Fulfilment in life takes many forms. In age no less then youth there are deep satisfactions to be won and numberless explorations still to make.
