XVION GROWING OLD
It is often said that we have no old women nowadays, that modern conditions and modern dress keep us young until we drop into our graves. And when we look at women, marvelous women, indeed, like Julia Ward Howe and Susan B. Anthony, and Mary A. Livermore[1]and others whose activities and beneficences have kept them young, we are inclined to believe all this. But how is it with the most of us? Have we learned the true art of “growing old gracefully”? In this age of hurry-scurry let us give ourselves pause, once in awhile, long enough to remember that we owe ourselves something, and also those around us. I know a woman who broke down under the strain of club life a few years ago; she was one of those willing creatures who do everything anybody asks of them, and she finally had to withdrawfrom everything and remain in quiet seclusion for some years. I thought she had learned her lesson, but no. I met her again, almost breathless in her chase about the city on some mission or other.
“Why do you do it?” I asked. “You have broken down once under the strain of all this excitement. Why don’t you keep out of it now? Or, if you must be in the midst of things again, why not let others do the hard work?”
“Oh,” she replied, “I must do it. It has got to be done, and who else will do it?”
“My dear, good friend,” I asked her, “did you ever stop to ask yourself what would happen if you and I were to die?”
“Oh,” she exclaimed hurriedly, “nobody else will do my work; and it is very important—I reallyhaveto do it.”
“No, you don’t have to,” I answered. “If we were to die to-night the waters would close right over our heads, and after saying the conventional things about us, and passing suitable votes of condolence, somebody else would take up our particular line of work; these things we think nobody else could possibly do so well would get done just as quickly and possibly a great dealbetter than if you and I kept wearing ourselves out with them. You just try it and see.”
She thought a moment and said: “You are right. I know you are right, and I am going to stop now.”
But she didn’t. And I suppose she will keep on, strong in the belief that the work she is doing could not possibly be done if she did not wear herself out with it, until she lands in a sanitarium again with nervous prostration. I see her now and then, always daintily dressed, always refined and delicate-looking, but with a wild air, a restless, hunted look, when she might be so pretty and attractive.
Are we not all overdoing this matter of public work? I have done my share of burning the candle at both ends—yes, and in the middle, too—and have had to “give myself pause.” And I have come to see that there is nothing to be gained by hurrying through life without a moment’s stop to consider the real meaning of it. It is sometimes a difficult thing to be in the midst of much work without overdoing. There is scarcely time enough to accomplish half what one sets out to do, is there? Then do not map out so much, but try to do your “stint” moreleisurely. What is to be gained by rushing through life as though a whirlwind were on our path?
We get to a point where we feel ourselves so necessary. We find so many things that need to be done, and we are sure nobody else can do them so well as we. And so we go on straining every nerve until the tension becomes too great, and we either go under—and discover that the world can and does move just as well without us—or we become so arbitrary that our usefulness is ended. And then we discover that we are only one of many just as capable as ourselves.
I know of no one who has given better advice on this subject than Caroline Bartlett Crane, who also “speaks whereof she knows.” In talking once on the subject of overwork, she said:
“If we will not be forewarned against overwork, let us at least be certain that what goes by that name is the real thing. Above all, dear ladies, let us not make our lives vain, vainglorious and in vain, by fancying that all busyness is business; by hugging a merely cluttered existence with ecstatic and debilitating self-consciousness, which is one of the deadliest banes to be guarded against as long as ‘woman’s work,’‘woman’s mission,’ ‘woman’s institutions’ and the ‘woman question’ agitate the air. Let us strive for more of that poise which experience and a stable nervous organization has given men; let us remember that there are absolutely no safeguards against fussing and worry; and let us question whether, if the deeps of nervous prostration could give up its half dead, it would not thereby appear that lack of system and synthesis in what we do, apprehensions for what we are about to do, regrets for what we did or did not do, omnivorous yearning for what we have no call to do, fretting distaste for what fate ordains we shall do, doing all the little unimportant things first under the delusion that then we will get unencumbered leisure for the things really worth while, doing things a hundred times in imagination before they are done, and doing them as many times again in retrospect, with carking concern for how the doer appears in the doing—let us ask ourselves if such travesties upon the dignity and simplicity, the singleness and wholesomeness of real work are not responsible for a very considerable share of the evils we commonly lay at the door of overwork; and are not such things unworthy of us?
“Let us strive to realize that we influence more by what we are than by what we do or what we say; and that what we say and do derives its quality from our quality. And quality is feltin toto, while of quantity a census and appraisal must needs be made.
“And let us remember, too, that when we rob a day of order, beauty, peace, we rob life of these things. How can we live our days one way and talk of living our lives another way? ‘As thy days so shall thy strength be.’ We must live so as to praise God all the days of our lives, if we would praise Him. Let us find some time in every day to lift unencumbered hands and heart, and exclaim with the psalmist, ‘This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.’”
It rests with us and no one else to strike the notes that give the purest melody. There is the life of pretence, with its artificial standards, and the life of honest endeavor, where every note rings true; in other words, a whole world of real people, where each man and each woman is measured by their own true work, where friendships are honest, where laughs are hearty and tears are real, where lives are happiest becausethey are lived simplest, where the air is pure and the clothes you wear do not signify.
Then, too, think what trouble might be avoided if we only mastered the power of silence. Especially is this true when some controversy arises. It is hard indeed to be at all interested in and to sit still when a heated discussion is on. But it is a good discipline. Next time just shut your teeth together and say to yourself, “After all, what does it matter?” You will soon find that other people are doing all the quarreling. It is wonderful how small a compass many controversies can be crowded into when you really stop to consider how much of them are worth while.
We all know how impossible it is to do our best in the home if we have to live in the spirit of criticism. If there is some one in the family whom it is impossible to please, who stands ready to ascribe to us motives unworthy of any good woman, and to deny that we have anything but self-seeking and selfishness behind all our actions, it becomes impossible for us to live out the best that is in us, or to keep anger and jealousy and suspicion out of our own hearts, after a time at least. Few women there are but knowor have known what it means to have such an element somewhere in the family connections. But, even if some one says hard things about you, the most powerful weapon is silence. The most contemptuous or stinging retort has not the force nor the strength of simply saying nothing. For there is nothing which you could say that is so hard on your adversary as to ignore her argument.
Vanity enters so largely into the make-up of most mortals that it must be recognized. When a gossip brings a tale about some friend, there is no rebuke so keenly felt as a dignified and sober silence. When such a story is brought and you ask some question, or even seem to acquiesce, you are pretty sure to be reported as having told the story. We all have days, too, which seem to be filled with petty trials and miserable crosses. The woman at home as well as the man in business has to bear these until every nerve seems bare. Small things assume huge proportions, and life seems almost unendurable. We cannot see a bit beyond the little circle of our trials, and discouragements loom large on our horizon. Nothing is right simply because we are not right.
Do not give way to ill-temper and snap up those around you. Go where you can be alone—out-of-doors if possible; if not, in a room by yourself. Say a little prayer. Relax your muscles. Think of the country, the mountains, the sea, a starry night—anything but your troubles. Stay in the silence fifteen minutes. There is wonderful magic in it.
“Bear ye one another’s burdens” may mean much, but there is a far greater nobility in silently bearing your own. One need not be unfriendly nor unsocial, but one should cultivate the power of silence and the habit of silence. If you do not read another book get into the habit of reading daily bits from Miss Call’s “The Power of Silence,” and her “As a Matter of Course,” and Lida Churchill’s “The Magic Seven.” These preach the gospel of relaxation which, translated, means the habit of not caring. That man succeeds best who flings his soul into his life-work and does his level best, and then does not sit up nights worrying over the result. Throw off your cares and anxieties. Drop everything and go out-of-doors. You remember what the immortal Samantha Allen said about worrying at nights? “Why, how often have Ilaid for hours worrying about things and made ’em out like mountains, only to see ’em drop off and fade away by the morning light, dwindlin’ down to mere nothin’s.” We have all been there. If we could live over again, now, all the time we have spent in fruitless worrying, in sleepless nights, we should have several years added to our three score and ten. Worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power. The sovereign cure for worry is faith—religious faith, or, if you prefer to call it so, optimism; perhaps it all amounts to the same thing. The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to her who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities, the hourly vicissitudes of personal destiny seem relatively insignificant. Whether one is really a “professor of religion” or not, the really religious person is that one who is unshakable and full of equanimity and calmly ready for anything that may come.
As the psychologist would tell us, if we wish our trains of ideation and volition to be copious and effective, we must form the habit of freeing them from the inhibitive influence of egoisticpreoccupation about results; and such a habit can be formed if we will set ourselves to doing it. Prudence and duty and ambition and self-regard have their places in our lives and we need not banish them, but do not let them interfere with our real selves. In other words, when we have decided on a plan of action, stick to it and do not worry about the outcome. Unclamp your mental machinery and let it go without fret or worry. It is the people who fling worry to the winds and keep up their nervous tone that succeed. All of which is applicable to growing old, even if you do think I have wandered from my subject.
Women have been too long trained to the need of feeling responsible about something. Some women cannot buy a paper of pins without a long argument with themselves as to whether they shall be sharp-pointed or blunt. Most of us fritter away our strength in useless fussing over nothing at some time in our day. What we need is the toning down of our moral and mental tensions.
Some women, a few, are born with the gift of self-poise; others acquire it, and many never know the meaning of the word; but self-poiseis never thrust upon any of us. What a comfortable sister she is who has it. How safe and happy we are in her presence. For she looks upon life calmly and with such a large vision that we forget how great the petty affairs of every-day living had loomed on our horizon before we came to know her. She has learned to close her eyes to such unpleasant things as cannot be helped and to smooth away those that can; she closes her ears to words that insidiously steal away one’s peace of mind and to utter the soft words that turn away wrath. Outside influences are never allowed to canker or to disturb the serenity of her soul; and, if she is a housekeeper, her family are allowed to dwell in comfort. In other words, she is not the kind of woman who chases through life with a dust-cloth in one hand and a fly-killer in the other, and a poorly swept room or a spot on the tablecloth at breakfast table are not the excuse for making the whole family miserable for the day. So many women seem to think that anything that causes them uneasiness to them is sufficient cause for making everybody else around them unhappy.
She has the secret of “how to grow old gracefully,”and there is no better nor surer way to avoid wrinkles than to keep out of one’s life and heart the demon of worry. If you choose, you may call this power an oil that makes the machinery of life run smoothly and noiselessly. I call it living on a plane where the mire of petty smallness, the hurt of wrong living and the danger of wrong thinking cannot reach us.
But, after all, why should we dread growing old? It seems to me that life should be brightest, like the sunset, just before the night—if it is night. I prefer to think of it as the real morning. When we have learned to drop worry and undue haste, and fretfulness and all disagreeableness, we are only just fitted to enjoy the serenity of age. Let’s stop right here with Hamilton Aide’s comforting verses on “Old Age.”
“There comes a time when nothing more can hurt us.The winds have done their worst to strew the shoreWith stranded hulks; no power can convert usInto the buoyant barks of youth once more.“But we can sit and patch the sails for others,And weave the nets for younger hands to trawl;And spin long yarns to listening boys and mothers,While sea and winds do one another call;“And point to perils, when our bark lay tossingIn that dread passage which we here call Life,And betwixt shoals and rocks we steered our crossingUnto the shore, where we have done with strife.“From seas tumultuous the sands have barred it;From there we watch the white sails fleeting by.Old age is never drear, if we regard itAs the safe harbor where the old boats lie.”
“There comes a time when nothing more can hurt us.The winds have done their worst to strew the shoreWith stranded hulks; no power can convert usInto the buoyant barks of youth once more.“But we can sit and patch the sails for others,And weave the nets for younger hands to trawl;And spin long yarns to listening boys and mothers,While sea and winds do one another call;“And point to perils, when our bark lay tossingIn that dread passage which we here call Life,And betwixt shoals and rocks we steered our crossingUnto the shore, where we have done with strife.“From seas tumultuous the sands have barred it;From there we watch the white sails fleeting by.Old age is never drear, if we regard itAs the safe harbor where the old boats lie.”
“There comes a time when nothing more can hurt us.The winds have done their worst to strew the shoreWith stranded hulks; no power can convert usInto the buoyant barks of youth once more.
“There comes a time when nothing more can hurt us.
The winds have done their worst to strew the shore
With stranded hulks; no power can convert us
Into the buoyant barks of youth once more.
“But we can sit and patch the sails for others,And weave the nets for younger hands to trawl;And spin long yarns to listening boys and mothers,While sea and winds do one another call;
“But we can sit and patch the sails for others,
And weave the nets for younger hands to trawl;
And spin long yarns to listening boys and mothers,
While sea and winds do one another call;
“And point to perils, when our bark lay tossingIn that dread passage which we here call Life,And betwixt shoals and rocks we steered our crossingUnto the shore, where we have done with strife.
“And point to perils, when our bark lay tossing
In that dread passage which we here call Life,
And betwixt shoals and rocks we steered our crossing
Unto the shore, where we have done with strife.
“From seas tumultuous the sands have barred it;From there we watch the white sails fleeting by.Old age is never drear, if we regard itAs the safe harbor where the old boats lie.”
“From seas tumultuous the sands have barred it;
From there we watch the white sails fleeting by.
Old age is never drear, if we regard it
As the safe harbor where the old boats lie.”
[1]Died since this was put in type.
[1]Died since this was put in type.
[1]Died since this was put in type.