Reflections on Aging

Friday, November 1, by Jerome F. Keating Ph.D.

The challenge of aging is a growing problem in almost all modern societies, Taiwan is no exception. Yet, while every nation must meet this problem in its own way, there is also an impact at the personal level: “How does each individual face the prospect of having lengthier twilight years?”

Thanks to modern medicine and personal life-style choices, people are now living longer. In a recent announcement, Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior (MOI) stated that life expectancy in Taiwan has risen to 80.2 years. That would certainly appear to be good news but it is also a two-edged sword.

On the surface, few would complain about having a longer life. What then are the drawbacks that arise? For starters, people are also now making different life choices. Alternative life styles are in. Thus more and more couples are marrying later and having fewer children. This in turn impacts the work force. And since the retirement age has been holding steady between 65 and 67, the question arises: “Who will replace retiring workers in this aging society?”

Taiwan’s neighbor, Japan, leads the way in this challenge. Japan has the highest aging population in the world with one third of its population being over 65 years of age. Europe also faces a similar challenge; nine of the top ten aging societies in the world are found there.

On Taiwan, the MOI is developing programs to counter aging as it seeks ways to promote and encourage citizens to marry and have more children.

The situation is complex, and we are not going to solve it here. Instead we invite you to take a journey through the thoughts and reflections that a host of poets and authors have expressed on the topic.

Rule number one: “Don’t complain.” Why? Cicero couldn’t have said it better when in 44 B.C. he wrote his famous essay De Senectute (On Aging). Cicero was 63 years old at the time, yet felt that he was not old enough to philosophize on the topic, so he wrote it under the pen name of Cato the Elder who (at age 84) stated: “No one can complain about something that happens to all men.” In other words, we can’t cry: “Why me?”

Next, there is the age-old response of the Metaphysical poets with their carpe diem (Seize the Day) approach. Robert Herrick states in To the Virgins:

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may
Old Time is still a-flying
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.

Andrew Marvell echoes this in To His Coy Mistress:

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

That said, when we do make time, we have to decide what for? Building empires? The Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, warns against such vanity. In Ozymandias, he recounts how a traveler coming from an “antique land” found in the desert broken remnants illustrating how the efforts of Ramases II failed. All that remained were:

...Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

A kindred Romantic, John Keats who died young, pondered the fickleness of fame when his beautiful poetry seemed unrecognized and he so urged his friends to have this epitaph carved on his tombstone: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”

An earlier Romantic, William Wordsworth, suggests in Ode on Immortality that since nothing lasts, memories are the better path to provide solace.

Though nothing can bring back the hour
of splendor in the grass,
Or glory in the flower;
we will grieve not, rather find
strength in what remains behind.

In this, we should not think just of ourselves. George Eliot states a similar thought:

“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.”

Of course, one could go to extremes, and consider the big picture and how we are all part of the human race in our connections; This is much in line with John Donne’s lines in For Whom the Bell Tolls:

No man is an island
Entire of itself,
Each is a part of the continent
A part of the main.

When it comes to the matter of whether one has lived a fulfilling life, one can aim to follow the more purposeful approach suggested by the American Shawnee Indian Tecumseh:

“When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

The British poet, T.S. Eliot provides a different philosophical bent and suggests reflecting on one’s past to put all of the life journey in perspective:

We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our searching
Will be to return to where we started
And know the place for the first time.

The purpose of such exploring would be to understand one’s past and have some pride in life’s journey. Eliot recommends what to avoid in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Prufrock is a rather sad figure who recognizes his aging problem:

“I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

Prufrock unfortunately sees that he is not Prince Hamlet, nor is he one to “disturb the universe;” he is only an “attendant lord:” one who states:

“I have heard the mermaids singing each to each,
but I do not think that they will sing to me.”

Of course, not everyone is into philosophizing about age; there are times when one just wants to be left alone, as Maya Angelou puts it in On Aging:

“When you see me sitting quietly
Like a sack left on the shelf,
Don’t think I need your chattering,
I’m listening to myself.”

Coleridge sees similar advantages in talking to himself in Youth and Age:

...
When I was young? Ah woeful WHEN
Ah for the Change, twixt Now and Then.
...
Life is but Thought, so think I will,
That YOUTH and I are Housemates still.

Whatever the poetic musings, it is appropriate that we leave the final statement to Dylan Thomas who is trying to console his aging father as his father nears death.

Thomas makes a point of noting how all types of men resist dying, as he runs the gamut of those that are wise men, good men, wild men, or grave men. He sees that they all do not go gentle into that good night. He emphasizes how even philosophers felt hollow. They all realize that they did not accomplish all that they set out to do, and for that reason alone, they do not go gentle into that good night. Thomas begins with a plea:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

He then runs that gamut of men and ends with urging his father to respond, even if it is to bless or curse him.

And you my father there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your sad tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

These poetic snippets of various authors do present a variety of choices on how to deal with aging; each reader may also have other personal favorites.

And so, regardless of one’s choice, most important is finding a satisfying way to accept aging. For as Cicero reminds us: it happens to all men, wherever we are.