(We celebrated at our house a few days ago the completion of another trip around the sun, another anniversary of the birth of the compiler of these columns. Although ascending as gracefully as possible in the number of our years we shall not try to impress you with the number of these trips we have made. But it is enough that contemplating the total journey each year leads to increasing time spent reflecting on the places in life we have been and offering advice to those still early in their journeys—-as Dr. Frank Crane might have been doing when he told readers of Woman’s World in 1913:)
REMEMBER OLD AGE
In youth, one finds himself full of many forces, physical, intellectual, and emotional. He is a bundle of desires. He ought to be. It man’s life’s forces run rich in him. So he desires to make love, to get popularity, to play, to do great work, to see the marvels of the world, to amass knowledge and altogether give vent to the steam and electricity which nature has concealed in his makeup.
Hence, he gives himself to varied activities. By gratifying all these wants he becomes somewhat in the world.
But whether he is a real success or not depends not on how he give way to these desires but upon how he controls them. It is not the things he does and the things he gets that make him a great man; it is the residuary deposit that is left in his soul.
All of these pleasures of getting and doing have their place, but the real object of them is that they shall pass over into the higher values of character.
So it is pitiful to see the old man was once a sensualist, a vigorous merchant, a political leader, and how now has nothing left but regret—for his lost vitality. Had he understood the art of living he would have gained from his more active days a wealth of inner qualities of spiritual strength and beauty; and instead of old age leaving him poverty stricken of happiness, it would have left him with the harvest treasures of wisdom and joy in life.
Adopt the philosophy of Omar Khayyam, take for your gospel, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die,” seek only “to get all the fun you can get out of life,” and you exhaust all your inner resources, and your old age will be that of a dyspeptic and a banquet.*
But begin in youth to resolutely choose the higher pleasures, to train yourself in independence from the domination of “things” and reliance upon the pleasures of beauty, thought, and love, and old age will come as the golden privilege of life.
It is a question of nobility versus meanness; it must be an ennobling and not a gloomy and narrow religion. Neither poverty nor riches matter; it all depends upon whether you are nobly poor or nobly rich. Sickness or health do not determine the temper of your old age; that is fixed by your being nobly feeble or nobly robust.
It is in old age that all of the higher truths of life shine undimmed by any deceiving circumstances. Then, if you are petty, selfish, egotistic, proud and small souled, there is nothing to conceal it. If you are patient, loyal, and full of love, it is apparent.
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*Although the quotation is often attributed to Khayyam, it actually is a combination of two verses from the Bible and also is found in the Book of Mormon:
Ecclesiastes 8:15—“Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.”
Isaiah 22:13—“Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die.”
2 Nephi 28:7– “Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us.”
We have found a couple of quotes from Khayyam that might apply to Dr. Crane’s theme today:
“Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring The Winter Garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To fly-and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing,” and–
“Why ponder thus the future to foresee, and jade thy brain to vain perplexity? Cast off thy care, leave Allah’s plans to him – He formed them all without consulting thee.”
(Omar Khayyam 1048-1131) was a Persian astronomer, philosopher, poet, and mathematician.)