THE SPAN OF LIFE
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
SHAKESPEARE.
Only a generation ago it was the custom for men and women to begin
to grow old at about forty-five. A person of fifty was always called
“old,” and a man was expected to be decrepit at sixty, a woman much
earlier. It is not wonderful that such men begrudged the time spent in
sleep.
When I was a boy, we used shamelessly to print books in big type,
indorsed “For the Aged,” on the theory that everyone must be nearly
blind at maturity. Even now Dr. George F. Stevens thinks that everyone
“ought” to wear glasses after forty, notwithstanding that many
Christian Scientists and Mental Scientists discard them long after that
age.
There is as much truth as wit in the saying that “A man is as old as
he feels, a woman as old as she says she is.” We used to insist upon
every year being counted and noted, too, in dress, occupation, and
general demeanor. But we have changed all this—even natty dress now
common to older people shows it—but the change has come about slowly,
and there are still many who think that people of sixty should give
up all active life and prepare to “grow old gracefully,” that is, to
drop willingly into senility. Those who are willing so to slip into
uselessness quietly, need much sleep; but even for them the sleep is
not a waste of time, but an aid to length of days.
There has been a great deal too much willingness to let go of active
life, because of the idea that “threescore years and ten” was the
natural limit of man’s life, and that to live beyond seventy-five was
to live upon “borrowed time.” There is a sort of tickle for the mental
palate in that expression “borrowed time,” but there is no substance
in it, if we will but examine it. How can there be “borrowed” time and
from whom is it borrowed?
Life is not a thing that begins to-day and ends to-morrow. So far as
we know, it has neither beginning nor end. It is beyond our power to
picture a limit to all life. Well, if life has neither beginning nor
end, if it has no limits, and if time is merely the unit by which we
measure seasons, why should there be a limit to what we can use of it,
and how could a continued use of it be called “borrowing”?
In the earlier days of the race, when all progress was made through
might, and war settled every question, when a man’s “work” meant
chasing over the hills, when men fared hard, and knew little of Nature;
when fear was the supreme emotion—it is probable that seventy years
represented a long life. To escape all the chances of death from
accident and ignorance for so long a time was an achievement, and, in
this way, doubtless, seventy years came to be regarded as the natural
period of man’s physical existence.
But with our increasing knowledge, with the extension of means for
making life easier, with our conquest of Nature, there is no excuse for
limiting ourselves or our fellows to the same short span. Consequently
man’s life began to extend over a longer and longer period as the risks
of living were diminished by civilization. War became a less common
condition; the very inventions for making war more destructive of life
helped to make people consider whether disputes could not be more
wisely settled. The next step was a natural outcome of that reasoning.
The latest wars have had more casualties and less fatalities; partly
because the effort has been to incapacitate the fighting-men rather
than to kill them off. We have begun to see dimly, at least, that the
taking of life does not settle any question. This leads to a greater
respect for life, and from respect to preservation is an easy step.
The intelligent man to-day does not make his whole life a mere struggle
to exist for his “allotted span.” Rather, he aims to preserve and
prolong his life by exertion and, even more, by repose. He has learned
that, while it is true that “not enjoyment and not sorrow is our
destined end or way,” yet to enjoy, in the sense of understanding life
and living, is to live so that “each to-morrow find us farther than
to-day.” To enjoy life is to use it wisely; to get the most out of it
that will make for happiness and development. It will not help to that
end to worry or lose sleep, because man’s span of life is short. Love
with your whole heart, and live according to reason, and you will win
the prize of sleep, and happiness and length of days shall be added
thereunto.