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Lesson 11 |
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How to grow old |
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What, according to the author, is the best way to overcome the fear of death as you get older? |
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Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. |
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In the young there is a justification for this feeling. |
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Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle |
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may justifiably feel bitter in the thought |
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that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. |
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But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, |
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and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, |
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the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. |
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The best way to overcome it -- so at least it seems to me -- |
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is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, |
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until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, |
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and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. |
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An individual human existence should be like a river -- |
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small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, |
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and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. |
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Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, |
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and in the end, without any visiblebreak, they become merged in the sea, |
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and painlessly lose their individual being. |
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The man who, in old age can see his life in this way, |
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will not suffer from the fear of death, |
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since the things he cares for will continue. |
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And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, |
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the thought of rest will be not unwelcome. |
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I should wish to die while still at work, |
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knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do, |
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and content in the thought that what was possible has been done. |
