It is true that all our lives we are conditioned to
assume that mental and physical vigor are supposed to
decline after we have made, say, sixty or seventy or
eighty trips around the sun on a whirling sphere
called earth. I heard a man say one evening as
we sat by the fireplace in his home and listened to
the romantic ticking of an old clock, "This clock
is ticking my life away." But no instrument
manufactured a hundred years or so ago can determine
the quality of anyone's life. No mechanism for
time measurement should cause a person one day to say,
"Now I'm old; the end is near."
Old age may perhaps more properly be thought of as a
state of mind in which certain mental attitudes, built
by customary and traditional thinking into the
conscious and unconscious mind, convince us that the
life force is declining and we are therefore expected
to think aged, act aged, and in fact, be aged.
That fascinating description of aging in the Bible
says nothing about time measurements such as minutes,
days, weeks or years but refers, rather, to
deteriorating mental attitudes. "When they
shall be afraid of that which is high [i.e., when they
shall have lost enthusiasm, or when the positive
principle has sagged], and fears shall be in the way.
. ." (Ecclesiastes, 12:5).
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It is altogether likely that people of all
ages--so-called old age as well as those of fewer or
younger years--can live better, healthier, happier
lives by getting turned on to self-repeating
enthusiasm. The real fountain of youth is not to
be discovered by Ponce de Leon hunting in some magic
isle, but, rather, in revitalizing attitudes of
mind. And certainly it is present in the dynamic
thought that we can live youthfully now and
always. I have never forgotten something that
was said to me by former Postmaster General James A.
Farley. I asked how he accounted for the
seemingly slight effect the passing years had on
him. His reply was classic: "I never
think any old thoughts."
Live Youthfully Now
"If most of us surrender to the passing of
years," says Mr. Kemp, "and let them make us
old, but certain others defy the passage of an even
greater number of years and retain the vigor and
enjoyment of life associated with youth, can it be
possible that aging is really our own fault? Is
the effect that passing years have on our bodies
really an individual matter? Here is what some
modern medical scientists have to say upon this point.
"After a conference of medical and surgical
specialists at the Decourcy Clinic in Cincinnati some
years ago, the following report was issued:
'Time is not toxic. All of those who develop a
time-neurosis subscribe to the prevalent superstition
that time is in some way a poison exerting a
mysterious cumulative action. . . time has no effect
on human tissues under any conditions. . . vigor does
not necessarily vary inversely with the age of an
adult. Belief in the effects of time by those
who subscribe to such a belief is the thing that acts
as a poison.'
"To put it another way, there is no scientific
basis for believing, as most of us do, that the
passage of years automatically causes our bodies to
age. [And, presumably, that would go for spirit
and mind as well.] 'It is ignorance of the truth
about the passage of time,' the report continues,
'that causes us to cringe in fear before the
accumulation of years. We need not surrender to
age, if our minds are sufficiently enlightened.'"
Mr. Kemp continues by telling us that a Michigan
doctor, Frederick C. Swartz, debunked the so-called
infirmities of age. "'The forgetful mind,
the doddering gait, the shaky hand--these are caused
by the lack of physical and mental exertion, and not
by the passage of time. Our present conception
of the aging process must be shattered, and our
already brainwashed oldsters made to see the nature of
their ailments. Daily mental and physical
exercise practiced with some degree of self-discipline
should raise the life-expectancy figure ten years in
one generation.'
"Dr. Swartz spoke of the fatal concept that
debilities come with age, and that at sixty-five one
is 'over the hill.' If accepted, this condemns
one to a period of ever-narrowing horizons, until the
final sparks of living are the psychoneurotic concerns
with the workings of his or her own body."
Enthusiasm Key to Continuous Youth
One wonders if an enthusiastic young person who kept
it going all his or her life could not restrain and
slow up the aging process. A philosopher may
have spoken a wise insight when he said, "The
secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child
into old age." Children are by nature
enthusiastic, and the effective person retains that
spirit throughout his or her entire life. As
Wordsworth has it, "Trailing clouds of glory. . .
we come from God, who is our home." The
child remains dynamic, excited, interested,
eager--until a negative time concept gets in its
deadly work; and the jaded so-called sophistication of
our time takes its toll; until it may be said, as the
poet expressed so graphically:
The youth, who daily farter from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Indeed, it could be that the saddest phenomenon in the
developing life of any individual is the decay of
enthusiasm. But this sad process need not take
place if creative and positive thought is made a
consistent practice. And, if the mind has not
been disciplined to those practices that are
propitious to the maintenance of enthusiasm, it is
always possible to begin a program of cultivation at
any time. And inevitably, with such revamping
will come a powerful rebirth or rejuvenation of
personality force and, who knows, perhaps of physical
force as well!
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more on
aging
more on enthusiasm
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