Lesson Thirteen  Text
　　How to Grow Old Bertrand Russell
　　In spite of the title,this article will really be on how not to grow old
　　which at my time of life, is a much more important subject.
　　My parents died young,
　　I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors
　　My maternal grandfather,it is true,
　　was cut off in the flower of his youth at the age of sixty-seven,
　　but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty.
　　Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age,
　　and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.
　　A greatgrandmother of mine lived to the age of ninety-two,
　　and to her last day remained a terror to all her descendants.
　　My maternal grandmother,after having nine children who survived,
　　one who died in infancy, and many miscarriages,
　　as soon as she became a widow devoted herself to women's higher education.
　　She was one of the founders of Girton College,
　　and worked hard at opening the medical profession to women.
　　She used to tell of how she met in Italy an elderly gentleman
　　who was looking very sad.
　　She asked him why he was so melancholy
　　and he said that he had just parted from his two grandchildren.
　　"Good gracious," she exclaimed.
　　"I have seventy-two grandchildren,
　　and if I were sad each time I parted from one of them,
　　I should have a miserable existence!"
　　"Madre snaturale," he replied.
　　But speaking as one of the seventy-two, I prefer her recipe.
　　After the age of eighty she found she had some difficulty in getting to sleep,
　　so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a.m.
　　in reading popular science.
　　I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was growing old.
　　This, I think, is the proper recipe for remaining young.
　　If you have wide and keen interests and activities
　　in which you can still be effective,
　　you will have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact
　　of the number of years you have already lived,
　　still less of the probable shortness of your future.
　　As regards health,
　　I have nothing useful to say as I have little experience of illness.
　　I eat and drink whatever I like, and sleep when I cannot keep awake.
　　I never do anything whatever on the ground that it is good for health,
　　though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.
　　Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age.
　　One of these is too great an absorption in the past.
　　One should not live in memories, in regrets for the good old days,
　　or in sadness about friends who are dead.
　　One's thoughts must be directed to the future
　　and to things about which there is something to be done.
　　This is not always easy;one's own past is a gradually increasing weight.
　　It is easy to think to oneself that one's emotions
　　used to be more vivid than they are,and one's mind more keen.
　　If this is true it should be forgotten,
　　and if it is forgotten it will probably not be true.
　　The other thing to be avoided is clinging to youth
　　in the hope of finding strength in its vitality.
　　When your children are grown up they want to live their own lives,
　　and if you continue to be as interested in them
　　as you were when they were young,
　　you are likely to become a burden to them,
　　unless they are unusually insensible.
　　I do not mean that one should be without interest in them,
　　but one's interest should be contemplative and, if possible,
　　philanthropic,but not too emotional.

　　Animals become indifferent to their young
　　as soon as their young can look after themselves,
　　but human beings,owing to the length of infancy, find this less easy.
　　I think that a successful old age is easiest
　　for those who have strong impersonal interests leading to suitable activities.
　　It is in this sphere that long experience is really fruitful,
　　and that the wisdom born of experience can be used without becoming a burden.
　　It is no use telling grown-up children not to make mistakes,
　　both because they will not believe you,
　　and because mistakes are an essential part of education.
　　But if you are one of those who are incapable of impersonal interests,
　　you may find that your life will be empty
　　unless you concern yourself with your children and grandchildren In that case
　　you must realise that while you can still help them in material ways,
　　as by making them an allowance or knitting than jumpers,
　　you must not expect that they will enjoy your company.
　　Some old people are troubled by the fear of death.
　　In the young there is a justification for this feeling.
　　Young men who have reason to fear they will be killed in battle
　　may justifiable feel bitter in the thought
　　that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer.
　　But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows
　　and has done whatever work it was in him to do
　　the fear of death is somewhat ignoble.
　　The best way to overcome it so at least it seems to me
　　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 part of the universal life.
　　An individual human existence should be like a river
　　small at first,narrowly contained within its banks,
　　and rushing passionately past rocks 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 part of the sea,and painlessly lose their individual being.
　　The man who,in old age, can see his life in this way,
　　will not suffer from the fear of death,
　　since the thing he cares for will continue.
　　And if, with the loss of vitality, weariness increases,
　　the thought of rest will not be unwelcome.
　　I should wish to die while still at work,
　　knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do,
　　in the thought that what was possible has been done.
　　Three Passions I Have Lived For Three passions,
　　simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life:
　　the longing for love,the search for knowledge,
　　and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
　　These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither,
　　in a wayward course over a deep ocean of anguish,
　　reaching to the very verge of despair.
　　I have sought love,first,because it brings ecstasy
　　so greatthat I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life
　　for a few hours of this joy.
　　I have sought it,next, because it relieves loneliness
　　that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness
　　looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.
　　I have sought it,finally, because in the union of love I have seen,
　　in a mystic miniature,
　　the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined.
　　This is what I sought,
　　and though it might seem too good for human life,
　　this is what at last .I have found.
　　With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
　　I have wished to understand the hearts of men.
　　I have wished to know why the stars shine...

　　A little of this,but not much,I have achieved.
　　Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible,
　　led upward toward the heavens.
　　But always pity brought me back to earth.
　　Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart.
　　Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors,
　　helpless old people a hated burden to their sons,
　　and the whole world of loneliness, poverty,and pain
　　make a mockery of what human life should be.
　　I long to alleviate the evil,but I cannot, and I too suffer.
　　This has been my life.
　　I have found it worth living,
　　and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.