| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 17 |
Page 4 |
They are unwilling to confess that they are growing old, and to yield their places of responsibility and care to younger men. Too often they make the mistake of overstaying their own greatest usefulness in positions which they have filled with fidelity and success in the past, but which with their waning powers they can no longer fill acceptably and well as heretofore. In this respect old age puts life to a severe test. It is the part of true wisdom in a man, as he advances in years, to recognize the fact that he can no longer continue to carry all the burdens that he bore in the days of his strength, no do all the work that he did when he was in his life’s prime.
Sometimes old age grows unhappy and discontented. We cannot wonder at this. It becomes lonely as one by one its sweet friendships and close companionships fall off in the resistless desolation which death produces. The hands that have always been so busy are left well-night empty. It is not easy to keep sweet and gentle-spirited when a man must stand aside and see others take up and do the things he used to do himself, and when he must walk alone where in former years his life was blessed with tender human companionships. Broken health also comes in, ofttimes, as a burden of old age, which adds to the difficulty of the problem of beautiful living.
These are some of the reasons why old age is a truer and sorer testing-time of character than youth or mid-life. New perils come with this period. Many men who live nobly and victoriously in the days of active struggle and hard toil fail in the days of quiet and ease. While busy and under pressure of duty they prove true and faithful, but they fail in leisure, when the pressure is withdrawn.
We should set ourselves the task, however, of living nobly and victoriously to the very close of life. We should make the whole day of life beautiful, to its last moments. The late afternoon should be as lovely with its deep, serious blue and its holy, restful quiet, as the afternoon with its stir and freshness and its splendour and sunshine; and the sun setting should be as glorious with its amber and gold, as the sun rising with its glow and radiance.
Page 4