From the series: „2023 – Honorary year of pastoral care for the elderly”
About old age in some wise thoughts…
All the wise men of the world, the great people, spoke and wrote about old age and I have now selected something in this sense:
„You don’t have to become old to grow old. You can be born old and you can die young” (J. Cocteau).
„Age is not a pretext for aging” (G. Slatter).
„Aging is not to my taste, but it is the only way to live long” (Sainte-Beuve). „We must add life to years and not years to life” (Victor Hugo).
„The bright side of things: despite your age you can be younger than ever” (Albert Einstein). „A man grows old when worries take the place of dreams” (John Barrymore).
„Aging is the ability to stay young longer than others” (Bernard Shaw).
„When you get old you have to organize your youthful spirit over the years” (Paul Eluard). „When you grow old, don’t stop smiling, otherwise you really grow old” (Balzac).
„At 969 years old, Methuselah looked so good, you could hardly have given him 345 years”! (Tristan Bernard). „Old age – when you start to say: I’ve never felt so young” (Jules Renard). „Old people, like little ones, want to be pitied for their pain, but no one feels sorry for old people” (A. Chekhov – „Uncle Vania”).
“I will never be old. To me, old age always means 15 years more than my age” (Francis Bacon).
„Old age has no color, only dignity” (Carlos Saavedra Weise).
„Education is the best insurance for old age” (Aristotle).
„Old age: the crown of life, the last act of our play” (Cicero).
„Old woman, heavy clothes, what I wouldn’t give to get rid of them!” – says a saying from the people.
And we find in popular wisdom a lot of references to old age.
I have selected like for example:
„The old man is the pillar of the house. Teach them in your youth, and you will stay in your old age. He who gathers in his youth, has in his old age. Sow in your youth to reap in your old age. Honor the old man as a parent and every young man as your child. Buy the old man, don’t sell him. Don’t laugh at the old man, because you will end up like him”.
Here is what we found in the outstanding personalities of our culture:
„Old age must be a moral situation. Old age is worthy of respect, when there was a manhood behind it” (Nicolae Iorga – „Thoughts”).
„Blow the dust off the chronicles and revive the virtues of the old people of that time, in the souls of today’s youth” (Alexandru Vlahuţă – „Thoughts”).
„The older people get, the more supple, warmer their spirit becomes, acquiring a more organic appearance. For the spirit, time is a dimension of rejuvenation” (Lucian Blaga). „Old age begins like autumn. With melancholy, with shadows that lengthen, with reveries and vague longings” (Octavian Paler).
„Our country has nothing to do with aging youth; they need old people, many old people, but young people” (Tudor Arghezi).
„Old age: maturity of all policies” (Victor Eftimiu – „Hippocrates is having fun”).
„He who is old in his youth can be young in his old age” (Arch. Arsenie Papacioc).
„If youth knew and old age could!” (Arch. Arsenie Papacioc)
„Old age – this evening meal of life” (Vasile Ghica).
The wisdom of old age: kindness, mercy, knowing how to enjoy the joy of those around you. To know how to gather your sails in time, so that you can enter the harbor before the storm catches you at sea.
In conclusion and conclusion I will state that „old age is a rich experience, but the experience of the limitation of human powers, of the inadequacies of the world, viewed in itself.
By this, old age is a view of another plane of existence than that of the world. She lives in the neighborhood of mystery. She is concerned about him. Human life itself and all existence seems to him a mystery. She thinks more about God, puts all her hope in His mercy. She understands the purpose of the world and earthly life, but as the purpose of the path to life beyond time.
The things done and suffered in life are useful to us, but only if they served our ennoblement, which opens us to a happy eternity.
A sterile life in the good, exempt from suffering, will condemn us to an eternal dryness. Old age can be useful in this case as well, making a person change at least at the end of life and teaching others to start sooner on the path of good things. ( Arch. Ioanichie Bălan , Father Dumitru Stăniloae is speaking to us, vol. I , Publishing House of the Romanian Diocese, 1993, pp. 132-133).
Stelian Gombos
https://steliangombos.wordpress.com/
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