| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 17 |
Page 7 |
How shall we live so that we shall be sure of a successful and beautiful old age? For one thing, all the life, from youth up, must be true and worthy. Old age is the harvest of all the years. It is the time when whatsoever we have sown we shall also reap. Wasted years, too, give a harvest — a harvest of regret and sorrow, of unhappy memories and remorseful self-accusings. We are building the house, all along the years, in which we must live when we grow old. The old man may change neighbours or change countries, but he cannot get away from himself.
To have a golden harvest, we must sow good seeds. To have sweet memories, we must live purely, unselfishly, thoughtfully, with reverence for God and love for man. We must fill our hearts with the harmonies of love and truth along the years, if in the silence of old age we would listen to songs of gladness and peace.
The old should never let duties drop out of their hands. Duties may not be the same when years have brought feebleness, but every day to the close brings something for the hands to do. No old man has earned the right to be useless even for a day. The old should never cease to look forward to the best of life. The year we are now living we should always make better than any year that is past. It was an old man, with martyrdom imminent, who gave as his theory of life the forgetting of things that are past and the stretching forth to things that are before.
Such a life never grows old. Even at fourscore it is “eighty years young,” not eighty years old. It is a beautiful fancy that in heaven the oldest are the youngest, since all life is toward immortal youth. Why may it not be so of the good on earth? We need not grow old. We can keep our heart young — our feelings, affections, yearnings, and hopes young. Then old age will indeed be the best of life — life’s ripeness, life’s time of coronation.
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