Open Writing

AGE
Age—length of time or of existence, duration of life required for a purpose, latter part of life.

One of our dons recently took early retirement. In some ways he has led a conventional life. Having completed his degree and doctorate he got married and he and his wife produced three children. In his working life he continued his research and was a tutor in college for the best part of thirty years. He then had a serious illness which required major surgery, and following this decided to take early retirement. His wife in her professional life worked for several years as a college secretary.
By this time the children had grown up and left home. They no longer needed to be supported. The first major step was to acquire a property in a remote part of Scotland which required considerable renovation. All kinds of skills were required to make a successful transformation. They both found this creative and rejuvenating.

Now that they had another base, the question arose as to what to do next? It was at this point that they took up hobbies, the husband began to paint and the wife worked full-time with silver and jewelry. Both have recently taken part in an art exhibition, and have begun to market their creations. An exciting new life has evolved for this couple. This section is largely concerned with the latter part of life. Nowadays enormous emphasis is put on the importance of youth and the active life, but the latter part of life is equally important and a valuable source of hope.

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12

He will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.
Ecclesiastes 5:20

Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.
Luke 24:29

But as for you, teach what benefits sound doctrine. Bid the older men be temperate, serious, sensible, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Bid the older women likewise to be reverent in behaviour, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good.
Titus 2:1-3

The weakness of age... is the penalty paid by the folly of youth.
Anthony Trollope, He Knew He Was Right, Oxford University Press, 1948, page 436

The best part of the art of living is to know how to grow old gracefully.
Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, Seeker & Warburg, 1956, page 108

Thirty-nine. It is a good age. One begins to appreciate things at their true value.
Norman Douglas, An Almanac, Chatto & Windus in association with Martin Seeker & Warburg, 1945, page 66

Many a mourner over a wasted life may yet be shown that he was fruitful of good when he knew it not.
Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, Charles Burnet & Co., 1887, page 43

My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach, listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.
Rabindranath Tagore, 'Stray Birds', LV, in Collected Poems & Plays ofRabindranath Tagore, Macmillan & Co., 1936, page 294

I like your account of his tranquillity in declining years. That is, or should be, the normal and happy outcome of a useful life.
A.C. Benson, Extracts from the Letters of Dr. AC. Benson to M.EA, Jarrold Publishing, 1927, page 35

Things look dim to old folks: they'd need have some young eyes about 'em, to let 'em know the world's the same as it used to be.
George Eliot, Silas Marner, Virtue & Co., 1912, page 271

It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.
D.H. Lawrence, 'Beautiful Old Age', in Vivian de Sola Pinto and Warren Roberts, editors, The Complete Poems of D H
Lawrence, William Heinemann, 1967, volume I, page 503

It is a criminal blunder of our maturer years that we so tamely, and without frantic and habitual struggles to retain it, allow The ecstasy of the unbounded to slip away out of our lives.
John Cowper Powys, Autobiography, Macdonald and Co. (Publishers), 1967, page 2

To love playthings well as a child, to lead an adventurous and honourable youth, and to settle when the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to be a good artist in life and deserve well of yourself and your neighbour.
Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque, Chatto & Windus, 1906, page 64

Yet Time, who changes all, had altered him
His soul and aspect as in age: years steal
Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb;
And Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
Lord Byron, 'Childe Harold', Canto III, viii, in Ernest Hartley Coleridge, editor, The Poetical Works of Lord Byron,
John Murray, 1905, page 186

I have scaled the peak and found no shelter in fame's bleak and barren height. Lead me, my Guide, before the light fades, into the valley of quiet where life's harvest mellows into golden wisdom.
Rabindranath Tagore, 'Stray Birds', CCCXX, in Collected Poems & Plays of Rabindranath Tagore, Macmillan & Co.,
1936, page 328

Tho' old, he still retain'd His manly sense, and energy of mind. Virtuous and wise he was, but not severe; He still remember'd that he once was young.
John Armstrong, The Art of Preserving Health, printed for T. Cadell.Jun. andW. Davies, 1795, book IV, page 135

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, II. vii. 139

Our religions were always 'schools for forty-year-olds' in the past, but how many people regard them as such today? How many of us older persons have really been brought up in such a school and prepared for the second half of life, for old age, death, and eternity?
C.G. Jung, Psychological Reflections, selected and edited by Jolande Jacobi, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953, page 124

A venerable aspect!
Age sits with decent grace upon his visage,
And worthily become his silver locks;
He wears the marks of many years well spent,
Of virtue, truth well try'd, and wise experience.
Nicholas Rowe, Dolby's British Theatre, T. Dolby, Britannia Press, Jane Shore, page 10

Learn to live well, or fairly make your Will;
You've play'd, and lov'd, and eat, and drank your fill:
Walk sober off, before a sprightlier Age,
Comes titt'ring on, and shoves you from the stage:
Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease,
Whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.
Alexander Pope, 'Imitations of Horace', epistle II. ii. 322, in The Poems of Alexander Pope, Methuen & Co.,
1969, volume IV, page 187

Of no distemper, of no blast he dy'd,
But fell like Autumn-Fruit that mellow'd long:
Even wonder'd at, because he dropt no sooner.
Fate seem'd to wind him up for fourscore years;
Yet freshly ran he on ten Winters more:
Till, like a Clock worn out with eating time,
The Wheels of weary life at last stood still.
John Dryden, Oedipus, IV. i. 228, in The Works of John Dryden, University of California Press, 1984, volume XIII, page
184

In the second half of life there is a natural movement of the imagination towards being rather than doing, away from prestige-motivated acquisition and accomplish-ment, and tentatively towards life's meaning, whether or not conscious religion has been important in the preceding years. There is usually a growth of concern about what things need more tenderness than they are getting, how much one's marriage needs re-shaping, how you are to bear the world's beauty when you have reached that point in the journey when you have a strong suspicion that the end of your life is following you.
J. Neville Ward, Friday Afternoon, Epworth Press, 1982, page 117

Let us have done with vain regrets and longings for the days that never will be ours again. Our work lies in front, not behind us; again 'Forward!' is our motto. Let us not sit with folded hands, gazing upon the past as if it were the building: it is but the foundation. Let us not waste heart and life, thinking of what might have been, and forgetting the maybe that lies before us. Opportunities flit by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.
Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, J.M. Dent & Sons, 1983, page 163

Whom the gods love, die young.
How the gods must hate most of the old, old men today,
the rancid old men that don't die
because the gods don't want them
won't have them
leave them to stale on earth.
Old people fixed in a rancid resistence to life, fixed to the letter of the law.
The gods, who are life, and the fluidity of living change leave the old ones fixed to their ugly, cogged self-will which turns on and on, the same, and is hell on earth.
D.H. Lawrence, 'Old Men', in Vivian de Sola Pinto and Warren Roberts, editors, The Complete Poems of DM. Lawrence, William Heinemann, 1967, volume II, page 662

To grow old is more difficult than to die, because to renounce a good once and for all, costs less than to renew the sacrifice day by day and in detail. To bear with one's own decay, to accept one's own lessening capacity, is a harder and rarer virtue than to face death. There is a halo round tragic and premature death; there is but a long sadness in declining strength. But look closer; so studied, a resigned and religious old age will often move us more than the heroic ardour of young years. The maturity of the soul is worth more than the first brilliance of its faculties, or the plenitude of its strength, and the eternal in us can but profit from all the ravages made by time. There is comfort in this thought.
Henri Frederic Amiel, Amiel's Journal, translated by Mrs Humphry Ward, Macmiilan & Co., 1918, page 77

Christianity alone deprives old age of its bitterness, making it the gate of heaven. Our bodies will fade and grow weak and shapeless, just when we shall not want them, being ready and in close expectation of that resurrection of the flesh which is the great promise of Christianity (no miserable fancies about 'pure souls' escaped from matter, but)—of bodies, our bodies, beloved, beautiful, ministers to us in all our joys, sufferers with us in all our sorrows—yea, our own selves raised up again to live and love in a manner inconceivable from its perfection.
... No! I can wait:
Another body!—Ah, new limbs are ready, Free, pure, instinct with soul through every nerve, Kept for us in the treasuries of God!
Charles Kingsley, Daily Thoughts, Macmiilan and Co., 1884, page 63

Old age is the most precious time of life, the one nearest eternity. There are two ways of growing old. There are old people who are anxious and bitter, living in the past and illusion, who criticise everything that goes on around them. Young people are repulsed by them; they are shut away in their sadness and loneliness, shrivelled up in themselves. But there are also old people with a child's heart, who have used their freedom from function and responsibility to find a new youth. They have the wonder of a child, but the wisdom of maturity as well. They have integrated their years of activity and so can live without being attached to power. Their freedom of heart and their acceptance of their limitations and weakness makes them people whose radiance illuminates the whole community. They are gentle and merciful, symbols of compassion and forgiveness. They become a community's hidden treasures, sources of unity and life. They are true contemplatives at the heart of community.
Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, Darton, Longman and Todd, 1991, page 140

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