No time to moan
There is a great quotation in Ernest Hemingway’s classic The Old Man and the Sea that I believe is most relevant to folk of my vintage.
“Now is no time,” it reminds us, “to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”
As I get older and I become more aware that my contemporaries and I are now in our twilight years, I find so many of these old classmates constantly complaining that it is several decades since we were hyperactive schoolboys with nary a care in the world. They spend time regularly bemoaning the fact that old age has crept upon us and has robbed us of much of what we used to be able to do. We have aches here and pains there. Getting up from a comfortable armchair requires a lot of effort from our weakened quadriceps. Our creaking joints (if they have not been replaced by prostheses of metal and plastic) remind us that we have long gone past our manufacturer’s Use By date.
But if one looks at the other side of the coin, adopting the ‘glass half full’ philosophy rather than the ‘glass is almost empty’ attitude, one realizes that there is still plenty that we old folk can do.
As Ulysses claims in that famous poem by Tennyson “Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven; that which we are.”
If one but looks at the history books, one discovers many examples of septuagenarians who have accomplished great things in their seventies. In 1546, Michaelangelo was appointed architect of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome at the age of 71 – while George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Rabindranath Tagore and Jonas Salk were writing well into their seventies (and writing very well in their seventies!). The founding father of Singapore, English-educated Lee Kuan Yew, having relinquished the office of prime minister at the age of 66, continued to learn Mandarin – and at the age of 81 wrote a book ‘Keeping my Mandarin Alive’ about his lifelong journey to perfect this language.
Of course, knowing when to quit politics and free up one’s time to perfect one’s language skills, as Lee Kuan Yew showed, is an excellent way to spend one’s seventies. What a contrast to those politicians in our own country who, although in their seventies, don’t have the grace to retire gracefully and utilise their remaining time and not inconsiderable skills to do something useful rather than keep on hungering for political office!
Folk in their seventies have often acquired a lifetime’s worth of knowledge, skills and experience that can be passed on to younger folk – if only the younger folk are willing to listen and learn. When faced with a problem, the old person is often able to find an efficacious solution – not because he or she is cleverer but because they are older and have seen it before! The Spanish saying ‘más sabe el Diablo por viejo que por Diablo’ (which translates as ‘the Devil knows more because he’s old rather than because he is the Devil’) is used in Spanish culture to convey the idea that experience and wisdom gained through age are far more valuable than innate talent or book-learned knowledge.
But having all this acquired knowledge is useless if there is nobody with whom to share it. If young people do not value the old people in their midst, if the old people do not know how to interact respectfully with their younger colleagues, it is our society that stands to lose.
One of the saddest things that people can face in old age is loneliness. To once again quote Hemingway’s Old Man, Santiago: ‘No one should be alone in their old age’.
And avoiding loneliness in old age is something that we should prioritise as we get older. Some of us are fortunate to have a spouse or children with whom we can interact – but for those who are not so fortunate, it is important to cultivate the company of others because such connectedness helps to preserve one’s mental function and emotional well-being.
Being fortunate in old age is having a group of companions – and it does not matter if they are old folk or young ones – with whom one can from time to time meet up and chat, smile and exchange thoughts (even if one does not always agree with the views expressed by one’s companions).
It is much better than bemoaning the passage of the years!
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