How to Grow Old
I borrowed Portraits from Memory and Other Essays by Bertrand Russell from the library to read an essay titled How to Grow Old, and I ended up reading the whole thing. Bertrand Russell, a British philosopher, mathematician, social critic and anti-war crusader, made significant contributions to a broad range of other subjects, from ethics to politics and from the history of ideas to religious studies.
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life," wrote Bertrand Russell in the prologue to his autobiography: "the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylcVyleo9aA&feature=emb_logo
All the essays in this book reflects these three passions. The topics and the ideas remain relevant, even the threat of a nuclear exchange (although I would like to believe that we have accumulated enough wisdom to never actually use these weapons).
The prose is exceptional, intelligent, passionate and funny. A pleasure to read. I will concentrate on the essay that made me read this book, “How to Grow Old”. In spite of the title, this article is really on how not to grow old, which at Russell’s time of life when he wrote this essay (he was his eighty-first year when he wrote this essay), “it was a much more important subject.”
Bertrand Russell suggestions of how to grow old are:
“Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded 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. One’s thoughts must be directed to the future, and to things about which there is something to be done. This is not always easy; one’s own past is a gradually increasing weight. It is easy to think to oneself that one’s emotions used to be more vivid than they are, and once mind more keen. If this 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 you children are grown up they want to live their own lives, and if you continue to be interested in them as you were when they were young, you are likely to become a burden to them, unless they are unusually callous. …..
The best way to overcome [the fear of death] 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 existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks 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 this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares will continue.” ___Bertrand Russell
In 1959, the bbc asked Russell what advice he would give future generations. He answered:
"When you are studying any matter or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe or by what you think would have beneficial social effects if it were believed, but look only and solely at what are the facts."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6DAkvymcB0