There is a goal in life that more people share than any other, and yet when they reach that goal, they complain and moan. The goal is living a long life. But how to be happy in old age?
Everybody wants to have a long life but nobody wants to be old. I know there is some incongruence in that truism, but such is the mindset of many people when it comes to old age.
But old age doesn’t have to be a time of despair. It can be a time of great joy. It can be a harvesting of wisdom, of deepened perception about the transitory and the lasting, and of detachment.
In old age things that are dear become more dear—beauty, ideals, spiritual longing, friendships, family and most especially, love. If a long life is well lived there comes with it a deep joy. That is, if you have lived right, the superior part of life is the later years just as a bottle of wine is more valued the older it is.
Consider the words of Cicereo from de Senectute:
The best-fitting defensive armor of old age consists in the knowledge and practice of the virtues, which, assidiously cultivated, after the varied experiences of a long life, are wonderfully fruitful, not only because they never take flight, not even at the last moment—although this is a consideration of prime importance—but because the consciousness of a well-spent life and a memory rich in good deeds afford supreme happiness.
and
The old man does not do what the young men do; but he does greater and better things. Great things are accomplished, not by strength, or swiftness, or suppleness of body, but by counsel, influence, deliberate opinion, of which old age is not wont to be bereft, but, on the other hand, to possess them more abundantly.
We learn from our mistakes. Our vanity lessens as we realize the impudence of our youth. To those of us who learn from life’s lessons, ambition diminishes as we age. The value of having more stuff is replaced with the value of having more love. The intoxication with life shifts from the outer to the inner as the years go by.
Why? Because of the knowledge that you can’t take stuff with you when you die. Only love.
True, there are many people who are miserable in old age, and complain endlessly to anyone who will listen. So there is no guarantee that once you are old you will be happy. But the opportunities abound if you come prepared.
I was talking to a 67-year-old man today who said that it is liberating to be free of all the ambitions and worries of youth. That’s understandable. It seems that to be young is to be chasing a dream that may never be caught. That’s a burden of a lifetime.
Consider Emerson’s observation: “The youth suffers not only from ungratified desires, but from powers untried, and from a picture in his mind of a career which has as yet no outward reality. He is tormented with the want of correspondence between things and thoughts.”
It seems to me that the happiest people in old age are those who never stop doing what they love. I think the whole system of the physical body conspires to function in a healthy way as long as it is a vehicle for the soul’s expression. Any retreat from this expression is a denial of life. And with such a denial the joy of life fades away.
As for me, I am here in the world of form for the sake of my soul’s expression. And it is my soul, in its radiance, that animates my body with its energy. If I were to stop giving expression to that inner prompting, then the energy would recede, and with it joy, and ultimately, life itself.
I’m in my fifties now. As I grow older, if I keep to my purpose in life, the joy that I feel will not fade. It will deepen.
Even with setbacks, failing health, loss of dear friends and family, I will go forward in life, expressing as completely as I can what I feel. For life is to be embraced, not shunned.
As long as that embrace is there, so will happiness be. And I dare say, if I’m still alive 30 years from now, I will be happier then than I was as a youth.
