Peril of Old Age

Evening Star, Issue 23355, 26 August 1939, Page 3

Peril of Old Age

A wealthy American, we read, has celebrated the sentence of death pronounced by his doctor by Riving a macabre party to his fnonds that eiiuecl with farewell toasts to the host as the clock struck 12. He had been told that ho had only a month to live, and this was his manner of receiving the information. During the evening he was the merriest of them all, cracked the best jokes, sang the best songs; in short, was, as the ipapor naively said, the life of the party. It is not, perhaps, an edifying attitude; the fastidious may dislike this .particular type of showmanship. Yet it is only natural that a man who has courted the limelight all his life should desire its full glare upon his final exit. In his defence it may bo said that he met with disaster gallantly ; his taste may be questionable but not his courage. “The best that can be said of old age is that it is an endurable state which old men manage, somehow or other, to endure; and to endure with considerable equanimity, courage, and even hope. 1 ’ This I read lately in a friend’s collection of quotations. Ihe source was not given, but I felt that the author had expressed himself well and summed up the whole matter very neatly. Old age and death are unpleasant subjects, and it is no use pretending to find much fun in them. Therefore it is all the more surprising the amount of fun that old peoiple themselves manage to get out of that state that seems to the onlooker so pitiable. Birthdays, which to the middle-aged are furtive or dreary affairs, are splendid achievements to them. “Eighty-five to-day,” they will tell you with pride, and chuckle at having robbed the reaper so long of his harvest. They are delighted to have outstripped; some rival, to have lived a year longer than some contemporary; or else they are eager to attain their century, and each milestone passed brings, them the nearer to their goal. That it must inevitably bring them also nearer to death is a disadvantage that apparently weighs light with them. Not enough is told of the dauntlessness of old age. Their bravery may be inevitable and passive, but it is very real. They wear their years like a crown of glory and a crown won entirely, it seems, on their own merit. It is all due, I suppose, to the fact that they are so busy enjoying life that tlipy have no, time to worry over death. 1 have an old friend who celebrated his seventy-eighth birthday last week and still walks three miles at a good round pace every day. He was most annoyed with his son for suggesting that strenuous exercise was now unwise and that it might be time to give up such exertion. “ Nonsense; it’s never time to give up anything if you enjoy life enough,” said this dauntless philosopher. This surely is the ideal way to face old ago. “It is better,” says Stevenson, to lose health like a spendthrift than to wdste it like a miser.” This is particu-

ffritten by MARY SCOTT, for the ‘ Evening Star.’

larly true when old ago comes creeping to meet us, and it is a precept most notably followed by the majority of old people I know. “ 1 should hate to grow old,” 1 heard a thoughtless young man say the other day in presence of an octogenarian grandfather. Wo all frowned involuntarily at such tactlessness, except the old gentleman, who exclaimed heartily: “Quite right, my boy ;so should 1.” Moreover, he meant it. It seemed to me one of the most dauntless challenges I had ever heard flung at the feet of the gods. The old man’s spirit was still young, his joy in life still fresh and glowing; ho felt none of the dreariness that we imagine must bo part and parcel of his years; ho was full of interest and of optimism. This optimism of the old is amazing. They plant serenely for a future that they can scarcely hope to sec. and are filled with hope at the prospects that dismay many of us. Perhaps their vision is broader, their sight longer than ours. Whatever its reason, their hopefulness brings great relief from the disillusion of middle age and the despair of youth. It is the supreme vindication of man’s courage and perhaps his greatest reward.

If this optimism surprises the previous generation, it appears positively fantastic to youth. “ He’s over 70; surely he must be full of fears—afraid to go to sleep at night in case he won’t wake up in the morning.” Not a bit of it. Nothing could be further removed from the genial courage of old age. Life has too much zest to permit of such craven fears. Even when they read of the death of their contemporaries their gallant spirit is not daunted; rather are they spurred to fresh endeavour through pride and satisfaction at having outdistanced yet another competitor. “He was 10 years older than me—and here am I, hale and hearty ”; they say it with a glee that is by no means ghoulish. The air is full of talk of danger today; danger, on every side and to every living soul—to young and old, to women and children, to non-combatants and to the peaceful. But there is one danger that we overlook; one that is ever with us, to-day as it was a thousand years ago—that universally ignored or casually accepted but imminent danger of old age, and of its close attendant, death. “It may be fairly questioned (it we look to the peril only) whether it was a much more daring feat for Curtins to plunge into the gulf than for any old gentleman over 90 to doff his clothes and clamber into bed.” It is “ R.L.S.” again, giving us that brave and heartening picture of old age which the rest of the world—depressed middle-age as well as hopeless youth—would do well to lay to heart; having read it. they will decide that dangers of all sorts press around us and that the only course is to face them as light-heartedly as possible.