Lesson 11 How to grow old

   
Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there is a justification for this feeling.
Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably 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 achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject
and 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 merged in
the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river--small at first, narrowly contained
within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders 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
merged in 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 things he cares for will continue. And it, with the decay of
vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will be not unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work,
knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do, and content in the thought that what was possible
has been done.