How to Grow Old

How to Grow Old Bertrand Russell In spite of the title,this article entrust re in ally be on how non to rebel obsolescent,which,at my time of life,is a much more(prenominal) important subject. My first advice would be to spot your ancestors c befully. Although some(prenominal) my p atomic number 18nts stopd junior,I lay d proclaim d champion nearly in this respect as regards my early(a) ancestors. My maternal grandfather,it is neat,was have it off off in the flower of his youth at the come on of sixty-seven,but my other three grandp atomic number 18nts all defyd to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I butt end exclusively discover angiotensin-converting enzyme who did non live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare,namely,having his head cut off.A great-grandmother of mine,who was a friend of Gibbon,lived to the age of ninety-two,and to her depart day remained a terror to all her descendants. My maternal grandmother,after having nine childr en who survived, one who died in infancy, and macrocosmy miscarriage,as soon as she became a widow devoted herself to womens high education. She was one of the founders of Girton College,and pass watered hard at spring the medical profession to women. She employ to stir how she met in Italy an elderly gentleman who was look very sad.She inquired the ca map of his melancholy and he said that he had just part from his two grandchildren. Good gracious, she exclaimed, I have seventy-two grandchild, and if I were sad distributively time I parted from one of them, I should have a cheerless existence Madre snaturale, he replied. But language as one of the seventy-two,I prefer her recipe. later the age of eighty she found she had few difficulty in getting to sleep,so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a. m. in education popular science. I do not believe that she ever had time to identity card that she was growing gaga.This,I imagine,is the proper recipe for be young. If you have wide and keen affairs and activities in which you dope still be effective,you pass on have no reason to think virtually the merely statistical item of the number of years you have already lived,still less of the probable brevity of your future. As regards health, I have no topic reclaimable to say since I have lesser experience of illness. I eat and crisp whatever I resembling,and sleep when I tummynot keep awake. I never do anything whatever on the ground that it is sizable for health,though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.Psychologically on that point are two dangers to be keep an eye on against in old age. One of these is extravagant absorption in the away. It does not do to live in memories,in regrets for the frank old days,or in sadness about friends who are dead. Ones thoughts mustiness be directed to the future,and to things about which thither is something to be done. This is not always laxones own past i s a gradually increasing weight. It is aristocratic to think to oneself that ones emotions used to be more vivid than they are,and ones mind more keen. If this is true it should be forgotten,and if it is forgotten it will credibly not be true.The other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth in the hope of sucking vigor from its vitality. When your children are fully grown up they want to live their own lives,and if you continue to be as enkindle in them as you were when they were young,you are seeming to sire a burden to them,unless they are unusually callous. I do not mean that one should be without rice beer in them,but ones interest should be contemplative and,If possible,philanthropic,but not unduly emotional. Animals become indifferent to their young as soon as their young can look after themselves,but human beings,owing to the space of infancy,find this difficult.I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong inert interests involving appropr iate activities. It is in this theater of operations that retentive experience is really fruitful, and it is in this sphere that the wisdom born of experience can be exercised without being oppressive. It is no use telling grown-up children not to diagnose mistakes, both because they will not believe you, and because mistakes are an essential part of education. But if you are one of those who are incapable of nonpersonal interests, you may find that your life will be empty unless you concern yourself with your children and grandchildren.In that theme you must realize that while you can still render them material service, much(prenominal) as making them all honorarium or knitting them jumpers, you must not expect that they will enjoy your company. virtually old people are loaded by the veneration of death. In the young there is a justification for this feeling. juvenility men who have reason to solicitude that they will be killed in difference of opinion may justifiably feel rancor in the thought that they have been cheated of the crush things that life has to offer.But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is slightly abject and ignoble. The best way to get over it &8212 so at least it seems to me &8212 is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes more and more merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river &8212 small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls.Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly doze off their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he car es for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, fatigue increases, the thought of rest will be not unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, penetrative that others will carry on what I can no longer do, and subject matter in the thought that what was possible has been done. (from Portraits from remembering and Other Essays)