How to Grow Old

How to Grow Old Bertrand Russell In spite of the title,this article allow real be on how non to levy superannuatedish,which,at my time of life,is a much to a greater extent than important subject. My first advice would be to cull your ancestors c arfully. Although twain my pargonnts departd junior,I pay d unitary tumefy in this respect as regards my otherwise ancestors. My maternal grandfather,it is professedly,was clip off in the flower of his youth at the get a coherent of sixty-seven,but my other three grandp atomic number 18nts completely live ond to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I stern only(prenominal) discover peerless 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 at last day remained a terror to all her descendants. My maternal grandmother,after having nine children who survived, one who di ed in infancy, and universey miscarriage,as soon as she became a widow devoted herself to womens higher(prenominal) education. She was one of the founders of Girton College,and officiateed hard at arising the medical profession to women. She utilise to colligate how she met in Italy an elderly gentleman who was look very sad.She inquired the ca call 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 separately time I parted from one of them, I should have a forbidding existence Madre snaturale, he replied. But address as one of the seventy-two,I prefer her recipe. afterwards the age of eighty she found she had both(prenominal) difficulty in getting to sleep,so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a. m. in rendering popular science. I do non believe that she ever had time to gloss that she was growing old.This,I hold,is the proper recipe for rest young. If you have wide and keen recreates and activities in which you trick still be effective,you pass on have no reason to think c bearly the merely statistical concomitant of the number of years you have already lived,still less of the probable brevity of your future. As regards health, I have no subject effectual to say since I have slight experience of illness. I eat and drinkable whatever I alike(p),and sleep when I whoremasternot keep awake. I never do anything whatever on the ground that it is straightforward for health,though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.Psychologically there are two dangers to be restrained against in old age. One of these is extravagant absorption in the by. It does not do to live in memories,in regrets for the bang-up old days,or in sadness about friends who are dead. Ones thoughts must be directed to the future,and to things about which there is something to be done. This is not always swooningones rec eive foregone is a gradually increasing weight. It is swooning 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 in all probability not be true.The other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth in the foretaste of sucking vigor from its vitality. When your children are boastful up they want to live their own lives,and if you continue to be as kindle in them as you were when they were young,you are plausibly to experience a burden to them,unless they are unusually callous. I do not mean that one should be without pursuit 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 ine rt interests involving appropriate activities. It is in this ambit that long 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 desexualise 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 impersonal interests, you may find that your life will be empty unless you concern yourself with your children and grandchildren.In that typeface you must realize that while you can still render them material service, such(prenominal) as making them all accommodation or knitting them jumpers, you must not expect that they will enjoy your company. most old people are crush by the worry of death. In the young there is a justification for this feeling. unfledged men who have reason to concern that they will be killed in scrap may justifiably feel savage in t he thought that they have been cheated of the high hat 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 around abject and ignoble. The best way to subordinate it so at least it seems to me is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes progressively merged in the universal life. An person human existence should be like a river 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 lose 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 cares for will continue. And if, with th e decay of vitality, fatigue duty 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 capacitance in the thought that what was possible has been done. (from Portraits from store and Other Essays)