How to Grow Old

How to Grow Old Bertrand Russell In spite of the title,this article will in reality be on how non to grow ageing,which,at my time of feel,is a lots much important subject. My first advice would be to choose your ancestors cargonfully. Although both my p atomic number 18nts died young,I earn up done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My agnatic grandfather,it is true,was cut off in the flower of his youth at the eld of sixty-seven,but my other three grandparents each lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I privy only discover one who did not live to a salient 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 last day remained a terror to all her descendants. My maternal grandmother,after having nine children who survived, one who died in infancy, and many miscarriage,as soon as she became a widow devoted herself to wo handss higher education. She was one of the founders of Girton College,and worked gravely at opening the medical profession to women. She used to relate how she met in Italy an elderly gentleman who was timbering very sad.She inquired the cause of his melancholy and he said that he had just parted from his two grandchildren. Good gracious, she exclaimed, I shed seventy-two grandchild, and if I were sad each time I parted from one of them, I should have a dismal creative activity Madre snaturale, he replied. But speaking as one of the seventy-two,I prefer her recipe. subsequently the age of eighty she found she had some difficulty in acquire to cessation,so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a. m. in reading popular science. I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was evolution old.This,I think,is the proper recipe for remaining young. If you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still be effective,you will have no conten d to think about the merely statistical fact of the number of long time you have already lived,still less of the probable brevity of your future. As regards health, I have no liaison useful to say since I have minuscular experience of illness. I eat and drink whatever I identical,and sleep when I cannot keep awake. I never do anything whatever on the ground that it is good for health,though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.Psychologically there are two dangers to be guard against in old age. One of these is undue absorption in the past. It does not do to live in memories,in regrets for the good 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 escapedones own past is a gradually change magnitude weight. It is easy to think to oneself that ones emotions used to be to a greater extent vivid than they are,and ones mind more keen. If t his is true it should be forgotten,and if it is forgotten it will probably 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 grown up they want to live their own lives,and if you continue to be as interested in them as you were when they were young,you are likely to operate a burden to them,unless they are unusually callous. I do not mean that one should be without interest in them,but ones interest should be contemplative and,If possible,philanthropic,but not unduly emotional. Animals become neutral to their young as soon as their young can look after themselves,but homo beings,owing to the length of infancy,find this difficult.I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities. It is in this region that long experience is really fruitful, and it is in this sphere that the wisdom natural of experience can be exercised wit hout being oppressive. It is no use notice grown-up children not to make 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(p) of impersonal interests, you may find that your life will be leisure unless you concern yourself with your children and grandchildren.In that case you must realize that while you can still render them material service, such as making them all gross profit or knitting them jumpers, you must not expect that they will delight your company. Some old people are oppressed by the revere of death. In the young there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in booking may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best 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 somewhat downhearted and ignoble. The best way to overcome it so at least it influencems 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 increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human being 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 the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will be not unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do, and content in the t hought that what was possible has been done. (from Portraits from Memory and different Essays)