GOLDEN OLD AGE

At the age of 71, I am ominously in the 6^th Age of Shakespeare’s seven-fold Ages of Man sequence – that of the “slippered pantaloon” – far from a flattering epithet. Yet old Will had got it entirely wrong. The fact is that the 70s ushers in a Golden Age of serenity and contentment, which I will extend as long as possible and whose merits I here warmly celebrate. My guides through this stage of my life include the ancient Greek sage Epicurus (341-270 BC), Scots thinker David Hume (1711-76) and the many-faceted philosopher Bertrand Russell who left the scene at the venerable age of 97 in 1970. A much more modern guide is philosophic American Daniel Klein whose Travels with Epicurus, published in 2012, sheds a wry but hopeful light on the primrose path of happy old age.

                   

Epicurus from Samos

David Hume from Edinburgh

     

Although Epicurus was born and reared in verdant Samos, where I have my summer house, he flourished in Athens, founding his community there known as “The Garden”.  Epicurus’ teaching focussed on a tranquil life free of fear (ataraxia) and the absence of pain (aponia). He recommended a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends, and in his Garden his followers were from all educational and social backgrounds, however modest, and unusually included women. There was nothing “epicurean” in the modern sense about the lifestyle of The Garden – boiled lentils and cooked beans were the stable, just as in my local Samos taverna – lobster, champagne and caviar were noticeably absent! Epicurus’ retiring life suits me down to the ground. 

To achieve tranquillity, it is necessary to turn one’s back on the striving, competitive, commercial world, and the dismaying, ever-shifting political one. Forget about securing that new income, or surpassing one’s colleagues in material things, or visiting that remote exotic destination. Be content with what you have got, with the talents you have kept after 70 years. It is time to live for yourself, to indulge your own past-times, be they collecting sea-shells, playing bridge or wielding a golf-club, at your own pace, and if you choose to snooze in your armchair whenever you wish, so be it. 

It probably helps me that I spend much time on a Greek island – there is something in the Greek Zeitgeist that encourages perpetual leisure and the sun warms the cockles of my heart and promotes altruism. Yet I do not believe that is a decisive factor. I am a Scotsman and have enjoyed many a rainy year there, without moral damage. David Hume had his brilliant Enlightenment salon in 18^th century Edinburgh; he disparaged the superstitions of religion and was entirely at ease with the finiteness of human existence telling Boswell that he was no more afraid of his own extinction after death than he was of the nonexistence that preceded his birth. Up to his end, he displayed intellectual passion and curiosity, goodwill towards his fellow man, humour, cheer and love for his friends. As his close friend Adam Smith wrote: “Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.” A fine epitaph and a model of how later life should be lived.

Bertrand Russell charms

Daniel Klein in Hydra

 

Bertrand Russell was nobody’s role model but he wrote acutely about facing old age:”The best way to overcome any 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 boulders 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.” Allowing the walls of the ego to recede resonates with me.

Daniel Klein is 75, a philosophy graduate from Harvard, is a now retired scriptwriter living in Boston, Mass, when not in Kamini on the delightful Greek island of Hydra. His excellent Travels with Epicurus shares my Greek connection. Sketching in his philosophical background (he is into Scandinavian existentialism), to my mind he is strongest on Epicurus. He emphasises the simplicity of the life, the importance of conversation and the stimulus of friends (not easy to make new ones when you are, like me, a sometimes grumpy 71!). He talks too of the life-enhancing pleasure of playing with grandchildren (I’m not so blessed yet) and the innocent joy of the companionship of a pet dog.

I take a daily cocktail of pills to keep me going and keep at bay what Klein calls “old, old age” - that dread 7^th Age

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

We all hope entirely to avoid this 7^th Age and I plan to stretch my Epicurean Golden Old Age at least until I am 85, cherished by my ever-loving wife and highly supportive and generous three sons. How lucky I am and how delectable is that prospect!

SMD

14.01.2014

Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014