HOW TO STAY YOUNG
We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to
count.
R. W. EMERSON.
The ability to hold mentally the picture of youth in all its
glory, vivacity and splendor has a powerful influence in
restraining the old age processes.
Old age begins in the heart. When the heart grows cold the skin
grows old, and the appearances of age impress themselves on the
body. The mind becomes blighted, the ideals blurred, and the
juices of life congealed.
Many people look forward to old age as a time when, as a recent writer
puts it, you have "a feeling that no one wants you, that all those you
have borne and brought up have long passed out onto roads where you
cannot follow, that even the thought-life of the world streams by so
fast that you lie up in a backwater, feebly, blindly groping for the
full of the water, and always pushed gently, hopelessly back."
There is such a thing as an old age of this kind, but not for those who
face life in the right way. Such a pathetic, such a tragic ending is
not for those who love and are loved, because they keep their hearts
open to the joys and sorrows of life; who maintain a sympathetic
interest in their fellow-beings and in the progress and uplift of the
world; who keep their faculties sharpened by use, and whose minds are
constantly reaching out, broadening and growing, in the love and service
of humanity. A dismal, useless old age is only for those who have not
learned how to live.
Growth in knowledge and wisdom should be the only indication of our
added years. Professor Metchnikoff, the greatest authority on age,
believes that it is possible to prolong life, with its maximum of vigor
and freshness, until the end of its normal cycle, when the individual
will gratefully welcome what will be a perfectly happy release. At this
point he claims that the instinct of death will supplant the instinct of
life, when the bodily mechanism approaches the natural end of normal
exhaustion. He believes that men should live and maintain their
usefulness for at least one hundred and twenty years.
The author of "Philosophy of Longevity" tells us that man can live to
be two hundred years old. Jean Finot says: "Speaking physiologically,
the human body possesses peerless solidity. Not one of the machines
invented by man could resist for a single year the incessant taxes which
we impose upon ours. Yet it continues to perform its functions
notwithstanding."
What we have a horror of is the premature death of the faculties, the
cutting off of power, opportunity, the decay of the body many years
before the close of the life on earth. We shudder at the giving up of a
large part of life that has potency of work, of action and of happiness.
This horror of senility increases, because life continually grows more
interesting. There never was a time when it seemed so precious, so full
of possibilities, when there was so much to live for, as in this
glorious present. There never was a time when it seemed so hard to be
forced out of the life race. We are on the eve of a new and marvelous
era, and the whole race is on the tiptoe of expectancy. Never before was
the thought of old age as represented by decay and enforced inactivity
so repugnant to man.
But why should any one look forward to such a period? It is just this
looking forward, the anticipating and dreading the coming of old age,
that makes us old, senile, useless.
The creative forces inside of us build on our suggestions, on our
thought models, and if we constantly thrust into our consciousness old
age thoughts and pictures of decrepitude, of declining faculties, these
thoughts and pictures will be reproduced in the body.
A few years ago a young man "died of old age" in a New York hospital.
After an autopsy the surgeons said that while the man was in reality
only twenty-three years old he was internally eighty! If you have
arrived at an age which you accept as a starting point for physical
deterioration, your body will sympathize with your conviction. Your
walk, your gait, your expression, your general appearance, and even your
acts will all fall into line with your mental attitude.
A short time ago I was talking with a remarkable man of sixty about
growing old. The thought of the inevitableness of the aging processes
appalled him. No matter, he declared, what efforts he might make to
avert or postpone the decrepitude of age there would come a period of
diminishing returns, and though he might fight against it he would ever
after be on the decline of life, going irrevocably toward the sunset,
ever nearer and nearer to the time when he should be useless. "The
conviction that every moment, every hour, every day takes me so much
nearer to that hole in the ground from which no power in Heaven or earth
can help us to escape is ever present in my mind," he said. "This
progressive, ever-active retrogression is monstrous. This inevitably
decrepit old age staring me in the face is robbing me of happiness,
paralyzing my efforts and discouraging my ambition."
"But why do you dwell on those things that terrify you?" I asked.
"Why do you harbor such old age thoughts? Why are you visualizing
decrepitude, the dulling and weakening of your mental faculties? If you
have such a horror of the decrepitude, the loss of memory, the failing
eyesight, the hesitating step, and the general deterioration which you
believe accompany old age, why don't you get away from these terrifying
thoughts, put them out of your mind instead of dwelling on them? Don't
you know that what you concentrate on, what you fear, the pictures that
so terrify you, are creating the very conditions which you would give
anything to escape? If you really wish to stay the old age processes you
must change your thoughts. Erase everything that has to do with age from
your mind. Visualize youthful conditions. Say to yourself, "God is my
life. I cannot grow old in spirit, and that is the only old age to fear.
As long as my spirit is youthful; as long as the boy in me lives, I
cannot age."
The great trouble with those who are getting along in years is that they
put themselves outside of the things that would keep them young. Most
people after fifty begin to shun children and youth generally. They feel
that it is not "becoming to their years" to act as they did when
younger, and day by day they gradually fall more and more into old age
ways and habits.
We build into our lives the picture patterns which we hold in our minds.
This is a mental law. When you have reached the time at which most
people show traces of their age you imagine that you must do the same.
You begin to think you have probably done your best work, and that your
powers must henceforth decline. You imagine your faculties are
deteriorating, that they are not quite so sharp as they once were; that
you cannot endure quite so much, and that you ought to begin to let up a
little; to take less exercise, to do less work, to take life a little
easier.
The moment you allow yourself to think your powers are beginning to
decline they will do so, and your appearance and bodily conditions will
follow your convictions. If you hold the thought that your ambition is
sagging, that your faculties are deteriorating, you will be convinced
that younger men have the advantage of you, and, voluntarily, at first,
you will begin to take a back seat, figuratively speaking, behind the
younger men. Once you do this you are doomed to be pushed farther and
farther to the rear. You will be taken at your own valuation. Having
made a confession of age, acknowledged in thought and act that, in so
far as work and productive returns are concerned, you are no longer the
equal of young men, they will naturally be preferred before you.
If people who have aged prematurely could only analyze the influences
which have robbed them of their birthright of youth they would find that
most of them were a false conviction that they must grow old at about
such a time, needless worry,--all worry is needless,--silly anxiety,
which often comes from vanity, jealousy and the indulgence of such
passions as excessive temper, revenge, and all sorts of unhealthy
thinking. If they could only eliminate these influences from their
lives, they would take a great leap back toward youthfulness. If it were
possible to erase all of the scars and wrinkles, all the effects of our
aging thoughts, aging emotions, moods and passions, many of us would be
so transformed, so rejuvenated that our friends would scarcely know us.
The aging thoughts and moods and passions make old men and women of most
of us in middle life.
The laws of renewal, of rejuvenation are always operating in us, and
will be effective if we do not neutralize them by wrong thinking. The
chemical changes caused in the blood and other secretions by worry,
fear, the operation of the explosive passions, or by any depressing
mental disturbance, will put the aging processes in action.
Whatever we establish as a fixed conviction in our lives we transmit to
our children, and this conviction gathers cumulative force all the way
down the centuries. Every child in Christian countries is born with the
race belief that three score years or three score years and ten is a
sort of measure of the limit to human life. This has crystallized into a
race belief, and we begin to prepare for the end much in advance of the
period fixed. As long as we hold this belief we cannot bar out of our
minds the consequent suggestion that when we pass the half century limit
our powers begin to decline. The very idea that we have reached our
limit of growth, that any hope of further progress must be abandoned,
tends to etch the old age picture and conviction deeper and deeper in
our minds, and of course the creative processes can only reproduce the
pattern given them.
Some men cross the zenith line, from which they believe they must
henceforth go down-hill, a quarter of a century or more earlier than
others, because we cross this line of demarcation mentally first, cross
it when we are convinced that we have passed the maximum of our
producing power and have reached the period of diminishing returns.
Many people have what they are pleased to call a premonition that they
will not live beyond a certain age, and that becomes a focus toward
which the whole life points. They begin to prepare for the end. Their
conviction that they are to die at a certain time largely determines the
limitation of their years.
Not long since, at a banquet, I met a very intelligent, widely read man
who told me that he felt perfectly sure he could not possibly live to be
an old man. He cited as a reason for his belief the analogy which runs
through all nature, showing that plants, animals and all forms of life
which mature early also die early, and because he was practically an
adult at fifteen he was convinced that he must die comparatively young.
He said he was like a poplar tree in comparison with an oak; the one
matured early and died early; the other matured late and was very
long-lived.
So thoroughly is this man under the dominion of his belief that he must
die early that he is making no fight for longevity. He does not take
ordinary care of his health, or necessary precautions in time of danger.
"What is the use," he says, "of trying to fight against Nature's laws? I
might as well live while I live, and enjoy all I can, and try to make up
for an early death."
Multitudes of people start out in youth handicapped by a belief that
they have some hereditary taint, a predisposition to some disease that
will probably shorten their lives. They go through life with this
restricting, limiting thought so deeply embedded in the very marrow of
their being that they never even try to develop themselves to their
utmost capacity.
Our achievement depends very largely upon the expectancy plan, the life
pattern we make for ourselves. If we make our plan to fit only one-half
or one-third of the time we ought to live, naturally we will accomplish
only a fraction of what we are really capable of doing. I have a friend
who from boyhood has been convinced that he would not live much, if any,
beyond forty years, because both his parents had died before that age.
Consequently he never planned for a long life of steady growth and
increasing power, and the result is he has not brought anything like all
of his latent possibilities into activity, or accomplished a fourth of
what he is really capable.
It is infinitely better to believe that we are going to live much longer
than there is any probability we shall than to cut off precious years by
setting a fixed date for our death simply because one or both of our
parents happened to die about such an age, or because we fear we have
inherited some disease, such as cancer, which is likely to develop
fatally at about a certain time.
Just think of the pernicious influence upon a child's mind of the
constant suggestion that it will probably die very young because its
parents or some of its relatives did; that even if it is fortunate
enough to survive the diseases and accidents of youth and early
maturity, it is not possible to extend its limits of life much, if any,
beyond a certain point! Yet we burn this and similar suggestions into
the minds of our children until they become a part of their lives. We
celebrate birthdays and mark off each recurring anniversary as a
red-letter day and fix in our minds the thought that we are a year
older. All through our mature life the picture of death is kept in view,
the idea that we must expect it and prepare for it at about such a time.
The truth is the death suggestion has wrought more havoc and marred more
lives than almost anything else in human history. It is responsible for
most of the fear, which is the greatest curse of the race.
A noted physician says that if children, instead of hearing so much
about death, were trained more in the principles of immortality, they
would retain their youth very much longer, and would extend their lives
to a much greater length than is now general.
I believe the time will come when the custom of celebrating birthdays,
of emphasizing the fact that we are a year older, that we are getting so
much nearer the end, will be done away with. Children will not then be
reminded so forcibly once in three hundred and sixty-five days that each
birthday is a milestone in age. We shall know that the spirit is not
affected by years, that its very essence is youth and immortality. In
our inmost souls we shall realize that there is a life principle within
us that knows neither age nor death. We shall find that old age is
largely a question of mental attitude, and that we shall become what we
are convinced we must become.
As a matter of fact the average length of life is steadily increasing,
because science is teaching men how to live so as to conserve health and
youth. Formerly men and women grew old very much earlier than they do
now, and they died much younger. We do not think so much about dying as
they used to in the early days of this country, when to prepare for the
future life seemed to be the chief occupation of our Puritan ancestors.
They had very little use for this world and did not try to enjoy life
here very much. They were always talking and praying and singing about
"the life over there," while making the life here gloomy and forbidding.
They forgot that the religion Christ taught was one of joy.
There is no greater foe to the aging processes than joy, hope, good
cheer, gladness. These are the incarnation of the youthful spirit. If
you would keep young, cultivate this spirit; think youthful thoughts;
live much with youth; enter into their lives, into their sports, their
plays, their ambitions. Play the youthful part, not half heartedly, but
with enthusiasm and zest. You cannot use any ability until you think,
until you believe, you can. Your reserve power will stand in the
background until your self-faith calls it into action. If you want to
stay young you must act as if you felt young.
If you do not wish to grow old, quit thinking and acting as if you were
aging. Instead of walking with drooped shoulders and with a slow,
dragging gait, straighten up and put elasticity into your steps. Do not
walk like an old man whose energies are waning, whose youthful fires are
spent. Step with the springiness of a young man full of life, spirit and
vigor. The body is not old until the mind gives its consent. Stop
thinking of yourself as an old man or an old woman. Cease manifesting
symptoms of decrepitude. Remember that the impression you make upon
others will react on yourself. If other people get the idea that you are
going down hill physically and mentally, you will have all the more to
overcome in your effort to change their convictions.
When we are ambitious to obtain a certain thing, and our hearts are set
on it, we strive for it, we contact with it mentally and through our
thoughts we become vitally related to it. We establish a connection with
the coveted object. In other words, we do everything in our power to
obtain it; and the mental effort is a real force which tends to match
our dream with its realization.
An up-to-date modern woman is a good example of what I mean. She does
not act like an old lady, and does not put on an old lady's garb after
she has passed the half-century milestone. We do not see the old lady's
cap, the old lady's gown of the past any more. Women getting along in
years nowadays dress more youthfully and appear younger than their
grandmothers did at the same age. They do everything to make themselves
appear young. Men are much more likely than women to grow careless in
regard to personal appearance as they grow older. They wear their hair
longer, they let their beard grow, they stoop their shoulders, drag
their feet when they walk, and begin to neglect their dress. They are
not as careful in any respect to retain their youthful appearance as
women, who resort to all sorts of expedients to ward off signs of age
and to retain their attractiveness.
The habit of growing old must be combated as we combat any other vicious
habit, by reversing the processes by which it is formed. Instead of
surrendering and giving up to old age convictions and fears, stoutly
deny them and affirm the opposite. When the suggestion comes to you that
your powers are waning, that you cannot do what you once did, prove its
falsity by exercising the faculties which you think are weakening.
Giving up is only to surrender to age.
We tend to find what we look for in this world, and if, as we advance in
years, we are always looking for signs of old age we will find them. If
you are constantly on the alert for symptoms of failing faculties, you
will discover plenty of them; and the great danger of this is that we
are apt to take our unfortunate moods for permanent symptoms. That is,
some day perhaps you cannot think as clearly, you cannot concentrate
your mind as well, you do not remember as readily as you did the day
before, and you immediately jump to the conclusion that a man of your
age must begin to fail, cannot expect as much of himself as when he was
younger. In other words, a person whose mind is concentrated upon his
aging processes is inclined to draw a wrong conclusion from his
temporary moods and feelings, mistaking them for permanent conditions.
The majority of people who are showing the signs of premature aging are
suffering from chronic thought poison, that is, the chronic old age
poison. From the cradle they have heard old age talk, the reiteration of
the old age belief that when a person reached about such an age he would
then naturally begin to let up, to prepare for the end. And so instead
of fighting off age by holding the eternal youth thought and the vigor
thought they have held the thoughts of weakness and declining powers.
When they happen to forget something, they say their memory is beginning
to go back on them, their sight will soon begin to fail, and they go on
anticipating signs of decline and decrepitude until the old age
visualization is built into the very structure of their bodies.
Instead of forming the habit of looking for signs of age form the habit
of looking for signs of youth. Form the habit of thinking of your body
as robust and supple and your brain as strong and active. Never allow
yourself to think that you are on the decline, that your faculties are
on the wane, that they are not as sharp as they used to be and that you
cannot think as well, because your cells are becoming old and hard. He
ages who thinks he ages. He keeps young who believes he is young.
We get a good hint of the power of mental influence in the marvelous way
in which many of our actresses and grand-opera singers retain their
youthfulness, because they feel that it is imperative that they should
do so. Had Sara Bernhardt, Adelina Patti, Lily Lehmann, Madame
Schumann-Heink, Lillian Russell, and scores of other actresses and
singers pursued any other vocation they would undoubtedly have been at
least ten, perhaps twenty years older in appearance than they are.
There are too many exceptions to the race belief that man's powers begin
to wane at fifty, sixty or seventy to allow oneself to be influenced by
it. We really ought to do our best work after fifty. If the brain is
kept active, fresh and young, and the brain cells are not ruined by a
vicious life, worry, fear, selfishness, or by disease induced by wrong
living or thinking, the mind will constantly increase in vigor and
power. Men and women whose faculties are sharp and whose minds are keen
and vigorous at ninety, and even at a hundred, prove this. I know a
number of men in their seventies and eighties who are as sturdy and
vigorous physically and mentally to-day as they were twenty years ago.
Only recently I was talking with a business man who broke down at forty
from over strain but who is now, in his eightieth year, more buoyant and
elastic in mind and body than many men at fifty. This man does not
believe in growing old because he knows that ten years ago he did not
have a bit of the cell material in his body that he has to-day. "Why
should I stamp these new body cells with four score years," he says,
"when not a single one of them may be a quarter of that age?"
Many of us do not realize the biological fact that Nature herself
bestows upon us the power of perpetual renewal. There is not a cell in
our bodies that can possibly become very old, because all of them are
frequently renewed. Physiologists tell us that the tissue cells of some
muscles are renewed every few months. Some authorities estimate that
eighty or ninety per cent. of all the cells in the body of a person of
ordinary activity are entirely renewed within a couple of years.
One's mental attitude, however, is the most important of all. There is
no possible way of keeping young while convinced that one must
inevitably manifest the characteristics of old age. The old age thoughts
stamp themselves upon the new body cells, so that they very soon look
forty, fifty, sixty, or seventy years old. We should hold tenaciously
the conviction that none of the cells of the body can be old because
they are constantly being renewed, a large part of them every few
months. It is impossible for the processes producing senility to get
control of the system, or to make very serious changes in the body,
unless the mind first gives its consent. Age is not so much a matter of
years as of the limpidity, the suppleness of the protoplasm of the cells
of the body, and there is nothing which will age the protoplasm like
aging thoughts and serenity enemies, such as worry, anxiety, fear,
anger, hatred, revenge, or any discordant emotion. If you keep your
protoplasm young by holding youthful ideals, there is no reason why you
should not live well into the teens of your second century.
Constantly affirm, "I am young because I am perpetually being renewed;
my life comes new every instant from the Infinite Source of life. I am
new every morning and fresh every evening, because I live, move, and
have my being in Him who is the source of all life." Not only affirm
this mentally, but also audibly. Make this picture of perpetual
rejuvenation and re-creation so vivid that you will feel the thrill of
youthful renewal through your entire system.
Some people try to cure the physical ravages made by wrong living and
wrong thinking by patching their bodies from the outside. The "beauty
parlors" in our great cities are besieged by women who are desperately
trying to maintain their youthful appearance, not realizing that the
elixir of youth is in one's own mind, not in bottles or boxes. Is there
anything quite so ghastly as to see an old lady (really old because her
heart is no longer young), with a painted or enameled face, dressed like
a young girl? Such a woman deceives no one but herself. Other people can
see the old, dry skin beneath the rouge. They can see the wrinkles which
she tries to disguise. She cannot cover up her age with such frivolous
pretenses. The painting of cheeks and wearing of girlish frocks do not
make a person young. It is largely a question of the age of the mind. If
the mind has become hardened, dry, uninteresting, if there is no charm
in the personality one is old, no matter what his or her years count.
Idle, selfish women of wealth who live an animal life, who are
constantly doing things which hasten the appearance of old age,
overeating, over-drinking, over-sleeping, idling life away, having
nothing to do but gratify every luxurious whim, are the best customers
of beauty doctors, who try to erase the earmarks of old age by
"treating" the skin and the hair. Doctoring the effects instead of
trying to remove the cause of old age never has been, and never can be,
really successful. You cannot repair the ravages of age on the outside.
You must remove the cause, which is in the mind, in the heart. When the
affections are marbleized, when one ceases to be sympathetic and helpful
and interested in life, the ravages of old age will appear in spite of
all the beauty doctors in the world.
I know indolent wives of rich men, who cannot understand why they age so
rapidly in appearance when living such easy, care-free, worry-free
lives. They are puzzled to know why it is when they do not have to work,
when they have no cares, when their wants are all supplied without any
effort of theirs, they do not retain their youthful appearance many
years longer than they do. The fact is those women stagnate, and nothing
ages one faster than mental and physical stagnation. Work, useful
employment of some sort, is the price of all real growth, of all real
human expansion. He, or she, who indulges in continuous idleness pays
the price in constant deterioration, physical, mental and moral. A ship
lying idle in the wharf will rot and go to destruction much more rapidly
than a ship at sea in constant use. Every force in nature seems to
combine in corroding, destroying the unused thing, the idle person.
Work, love, kindness, sympathy, helpfulness, unselfish interest--these
are the eternal youth essences. These never age, and if you make friends
with them they will act like a leaven in your life, enriching your
nature, sweetening and ennobling your character, and prolonging your
youth even to the century mark.
We are learning that the fabled fountain of youth lies in ourselves; is
in our own mentality. Perpetual rejuvenation and renewal are possible
through right thinking. We look as old as we think and feel, because
thought and feeling maintain or change our appearance in exact
accordance with their persistence or their variations. It is impossible
to appear youthful and remain young unless we feel young. Youthful
thinking should be a life habit.