A Prose Ode to Old Age

                                                   

                                                    A  Prose Ode to Old Age

All the world is a stage

And all the men and women merely players

They have their exits and their entrances

And one man in his time plays many parts

His acts being seven ages.

These are lines from Shakespeare where he goes on to describe the seven stages of Man (used in the generic sense)starting as an infant and growing through different phases of life  as a boy, a lover, a soldier, a  grown up wise man, an old man with weak eyes and voice and finally ending his life history and  going into oblivion  “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste ,sans everything”.

As a young student, I used to doodle these seven stages without ever thinking about the day when I would arrive at the penultimate stage or the last phase of my life. Today at 75+, I know I am almost in the last phase, though by modern standards and modern medicine, I can pull on to the nervous 90s even if I fail to score a century.

Though I still do not feel I am 75+ in years (on the contrary feel as young as I was in my 40s and 50s) nor acknowledge that age is creeping on me despite the odd signals I get of aches and pains here and there, many of my well wishers and other sexa -and septua -genarian friends look at me as an elderly person and confirm it by offering me gratuitous advice about the wisdom of moving into old age home, euphemistically known as Senior Citizens home. It is during such moments that I begin to think I am in the last rung of the ladder and no longer belong to the rom.com age. But I do not know ( and for that matter no one knows) where I will be heading soon - towards heaven or hell. Life is a macro snake and ladder board and when we reach the last horizontal row at the top and roll  the dice, we cannot foresee if we will  hurtle down from the top to the bottom, sliding down a snake towards the lowest row on the gridded square board . It is in one’s best interest to keep hoping to climb up the ladder than roll down a snake.

When I go for my morning walks (to prove to myself that at 75+ I am fit and energetic) I often compare myself with many of the walkers of  my age - some with stick, some with wobbly legs and some supporting themselves on  spouses or servants - and wonder when I will become three-legged or weak kneed or need  support  to go on  my rounds.  There are weeks on stretch  when I do not see one or two of the regular walkers I get a disturbing thought that their names must have been stuck off the life register . But on the day the missing walker surfaces, my heart beats rapidly that all is well that does not end.

Contrary to the general perception that our progression in years marks the gradual regression of our physical, mental and intellectual abilities, the golden years bring with them the wisdom of experience. Age like the leaf mellows before it withers and falls. It is often noticed that a grandpa is less dictatorial to his grandchild than what he was towards his own offspring.  Based on our experience and accumulated wisdom, this last phase of life should  mark a graceful acceptance and tolerance of the new age trends and manners even when they are at odds with the old traditional mores.   Wisdom lies in recognizing and accepting change that is an inevitable part of life. As a teacher who had taught for more than four decades, I can affirm say that a teacher remains young because s/he has had the good fortune to be connected with the younger generation for a major part of his/her life. The laughing, joking, talking, of young people  with a happy-go-lucky attitude, unconcerned and unworried about ‘the fretful fever and stir of the world’, is a sight that reminds us of the glory and freshness of our yesteryears. It will be a pity if we feel that those days have passed and despair about the loss of  our youth.  Instead the nostalgia on seeing the young should help us to say (to quote Wordsworth)

   All the earth is gay

       Land and sea

  give themselves up to jollity

  And with the heart of May

  Doth every beast keep its holiday

   Thou, Child of Joy,

   Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts,thou happy

    Shepherd-  boy!

    Ye blessed  creatures,I have heard the call

    Ye to each other make; I see

    The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee

     My heart is at your festival

     My head hath its coronal

    The fullness of your bliss, I feel -I feel it all

Wordsworth’s rapturous ecstasy is undercut by thoughts of grief that things he had seen, he could see no more. However towards the end of the poem, he recognizes the immortality of the glory and freshness of the past that would sustain him in the years past his youth.

Born in a Hindu family, I have been taught to renounce the world as a practical way of coping with old age. The concept of Vanaprastha ingrained in us from our early years exhorts old people to  retreat from worldly life to facilitate the transition from worldly (material)to spiritual life. The concept of old age homes probably is a spin- off of this concept with a difference- instead of a retreat to a forest, these homes promise a retreat to a 5 star splendour.

I think that involvement in daily activities with detachment( that is no expectation of any personal gain) is a better way of coping with age rather than retreating from the world. With the store of experience and knowledge that one has garnered over many years, this is the time to reflect on them, modify them factoring the new generation’s views, values and attitudes and communicate the same to the younger generation orally or through writing. This is the time to pursue activities that we like in a leisurely manner. Attending to one’s needs without dependence on others is indeed a blessing. If such a blessing is not conferred on us, it is better to use one’s limited capacity in a cheerful way so as not to be a wearisome burden on others. Keeping oneself physically and mentally occupied is a possible means of coping with old age problems. I have a neighbor who is 80+ and had fractured her hip a year back. She now moves with the aid of a walker, but remains cheerful, receives visitors, keeps busy with reading books of her interest and everyday writes one hundred and eight times “SriRamajayam” known as Likitha Jap or Writing Meditation. This gives her  a complete sense of surrender to an inner conscience and peace while writing the golden words. She thus exercises her fingers while engaging all her senses in the service of the Lord. Detachment is not renunciation but not seeking  personal glory or gain while performing one’s duties to one’s limited potential in old age.

In the West, old age and death have proved the subject of many writers. The Christian poet, John Donne  in the 17^th C mocked at death both in his love sonnets and religious sonnets.  He speaks of the power of love – both secular and divine- that will defy death and live eternally.

All other things, to their destruction draw,

Only our love hath no decay;

This, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,

Running it never runs from us away,

But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

The triumph the lovers proclaim here defies the state of flux it affirms.  It is death that shall die as for love there shall be no death.  This is what is known as Hesed, in Kabbalah, the Jewish school of thought- God’s covenant of love for men and women. But the West ‘s approach to old age  in the modern era is a mix of nostalgia and despair.

 T.S.Eliot’s Gerontion is an old man who deplores  aging, aridity, physical and sensual and sexual  decay and despairs of a life of emotional sterility, devoid of faith  and spiritual vitality.  The poem ends  with the couplet “Tenants of the house/Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.”

The Irish poet, W.B. Yeats’ Among School Children is a poem on the worth and value  of life in the context of time’s toll on our physical being and the inevitability of death. Looking at the gaunt image of his past lover, the once pretty young woman, he wonders whether his mother would have imagined her son when he was a baby on her lap that he would  fall in love with this old woman before him , withered, shrunk and who has seen sixty odd winters. The disturbing question of how to reconcile with the ravages of time makes him agonize the most basic of all questions about the worth and value of life. He understands that just as a tree cannot be separately viewed as  “the leaf, the blossom or the bole,”  or “the dancer from the dance”,  life must be viewed with a “brightening glance,” seeing the beauty in its entirety.  

Yet another Irish writer Samuel Beckett looks at life as one of repetition: “When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? (Calmer.) They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. (He jerks the rope.) On!” To move ON is Beckett’s answer to the vicissitudes of life as a TINA factor.

There are many ways to approach old age with dignity and courage. The wisdom of great literature is “something of the strong light of the canonical, of that perfection which destroys” all our fears, worries and despair as we move on in years before the last post is sounded. Let us recognize the power of authority that one finds in the great classics and seek a transfer of power from the writers to ourselves. As I finished writing this piece more by way of  instilling  courage to walk the last few steps, I received this line from a friend on my mail: Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." Well that seems to be the right clue to the problems of gerontology.