How to Grow Old

更新：2023-11-22

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[00:01.46]Lesson 11
[00:03.20]How to grow old
[00:12.84]What, according to the author, is the best way to overcome the fear of death as you get older?
[00:22.43]Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death.
[00:27.13]In the young there is a justification for this feeling.
[00:31.12]Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle
[00:35.30]may justifiably feel bitter in the thought
[00:38.27]that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer.
[00:43.15]But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows,
[00:48.12]and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do,
[00:52.21]the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble.
[00:57.46]The best way to overcome it -- so at least it seems to me --
[01:01.79]is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal,
[01:06.93]until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede,
[01:11.94]and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.
[01:17.73]An individual human existence should be like a river --
[01:21.99]small at first, narrowly contained within its banks,
[01:26.38]and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls.
[01:32.29]Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly,
[01:39.27]and in the end, without any visiblebreak, they become merged in the sea,
[01:45.44]and painlessly lose their individual being.
[01:49.70]The man who, in old age can see his life in this way,
[01:54.58]will not suffer from the fear of death,
[01:57.68]since the things he cares for will continue.
[02:01.73]And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases,
[02:06.66]the thought of rest will be not unwelcome.
[02:10.85]I should wish to die while still at work,
[02:13.91]knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do,
[02:18.35]and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.