But the gentle spirit, fraught with love—
Bright deeds of happiness unfold;
Grows brighter, lovelier with age—
More winsome still—grows never old”
“We do not count a man’s years,” said Emerson, “until he has nothing else to count.” It is not the years that age us so much as the use we make of them, and the way we live them. Excesses of any kind are fatal to longevity or the prolongation of youth.
Bitter memories of a sinful life which has gone all wrong make premature furrows in the face, take the brightness from the eyes and the elasticity from the step, and make one’s life sapless and uninteresting.
The Bible teaches that a clean life, a pure life, a simple life, and a useful life shall be long. “His flesh shall be fresher than a child’s. He shall return to the days of his youth.”
It is the useless complexities in which vanity and unworthy ambition entangle us that weir away life and make so many Americans old men and women at forty. The simple life can be the fullest, noblest, and most useful. Rev. Charles Wagner says that a simple life and a strenuous life are not inconsistent, as a peaceful life and a vigorous life are not In his little book, “The Simple Life,” he shows most effectively how our needless complexities of thought and feeling cause us to waste energies that should be concentrated on useful ends. He emphasizes the fact that by our worrying and vexation of spirit we rob ourselves of vigor that, rightly employed, would accomplish valuable results.
“In this age of rush, hurry, and tumbling over each other, thousands imagine it is necessary to be doing something all one’s waking (or we will say business) hours to attain success. Leisure is almost a sin. This is a great mistake,” says Prentice Mulford. “Thousands on thousands are so ‘doing’ all the time. What does their ‘doing’ amount to? A pittance, a bare subsistence, and why? Because there is no discretion as to what the person’s force is put upon. One woman wears her body out at forty in polishing stoves, scrubbing tin-ware, and in hundreds of other little jobs. Her mind is all absorbed in these details. Another one sits quietly and an idea comes to her whereby all this work may be accomplished without any physical effort on her part, and by those who can do nothing else. She is the more likely to preserve her health and vigor. Health and vigor are the belongings of a relatively perfect maturity that is even more attractive than what is generally called youth.
“It is a great aid to the preservation of youth and vigor to be able to sit still and keep still in mind as well as in body when there is really nothing to do, because in such condition mind and body are recuperating and filling up with new force. The body is not fed with material food alone. There are other elements, now little recognized, which act upon it and give it strength, and the grand source and means of receiving these lie partly in that mental and physical quietude of mind which acts only when it has full power to act. If, then, wisdom guides action either by brain or hand, a great deal more is accomplished and a balance of life's forces is kept in reserve.”
Few people realize, also, that the day processes, unless checked, still go on while we sleep. If you have been running worry thoughts, fretting thoughts, anxious thoughts, pessimistic thoughts, hard, jealous, envious, greedy thoughts through your mind during the day, you may be sure that these will run their deadly course in the brain far into the night, furrowing their tracks deeper and deeper in the nervous tissue, exhausting nerve force and vitality, and that they will outpicture themselves in the face by deepening the lines, by making more prominent and permanent the wrinkles. Many people are so constituted that the moment they are free from absorbing duties their troubles and trials flock into their minds and fill their imaginations with hideous pictures, robbing them of all joy, and spontaneity, and happiness.
The moment they lie down at night their minds begin to work to their injury. Their imaginations magnify the dark pictures, the disagreeable experiences, and they toss upon their beds until they go to sleep from sheer exhaustion in this unhappy frame of mind. Is it any wonder that they age rapidly; that they get up in the morning tired and exhausted; that they have to resort to all sorts of artificial sedatives to make them sleep; that they are always taking tonics or stimulants to keep themselves in condition to work?
We shall some time learn that the mind is its own tonic when we know how to use it; that it is its own best stimulant; that when we live normally we shall not need narcotics or drugs of any kind; that the mind will be its own best protector, its own rejuvenator. It is only a question of holding the mind right, of holding the harmonious thought, the cheerful thought, the helpful thought, the love thought, and while these dominate the mind, the enemy thoughts which tear down and destroy cannot enter. We should be able to shut off all the day processes which grind out the life, and which exhaust the nerve force and the brain energy, and the moment we quit our business we should begin to build up, to recuperate for the next day; to fill up the cask again for the next demand.
I know a few people who have learned the supreme art of preparing for a sweet, peaceful, restful, refreshing sleep by reversing the brain processes which have perplexed them and bothered them during the day. They have learned the secret of shutting out all their troubles, trials, and perplexities, of locking them in the store, or office, or factory when they turn the key at night. They never drag their business troubles home. They consider themselves at play from the moment they leave work until they get back again. Nothing can induce them to be bothered or bored with anything relating to business. They have learned the secret and power of the harmonious thought, the happy thought, the cheerful, optimistic thought. They prepare their minds for a serene, harmonious night’s sleep by summoning thoughts of joy, youth, peace, and love to be their mind guests for the night, and will entertain no others. They will not allow the old worry thought and anxious thought to drag their hideous images through the brain to spoil their rest and to leave ugly autographs in the face. The result is that they get up in the morning refreshed, rejuvenated, with all the spontaneity of their youth.
We grow old because we do not know enough to keep young, just as we become sick and diseased because we do not know enough to keep well. Sickness is a result of ignorance and wrong thinking. The time will come when a man will no more harbor thoughts that will make him sick or weak than he would think of putting his hands into the fire. No man can be ill if he always has right thoughts and takes ordinary care of his body. If he will think only useful thoughts he can maintain his youth far beyond the usual period.
Never smother the impulse to act in a youthful manner because you think you are too old. Recently, at a family gathering, the boys were trying to get their father, past sixty, to play with them. “Oh, go away, go away!” he said; “I am too old for that.” But the mother entered into their sports, apparently with just as much enthusiasm and real delight as if she were only their age. The youthful spirit shone in her eyes and manifested itself in every movement. Her frolic with the boys explains why she looks so much younger than her husband, in spite of the very slight difference in their years.
Be always as young as you feel, and keep young by associating with young people, and taking an interest in their interests, hopes, plans, and amusements. The vitality of youth is contagious.
When questioned as to the secret of his marvellous youthfulness, in his eightieth year, Oliver Wendell Holmes replied that it was due chiefly “to a cheerful disposition and invariable contentment in every period of my life with what I was. I never felt the pangs of ambition, discontent, and disquietude that make us grow old prematurely by carving wrinkles in our faces. Wrinkles do not appear on faces that have constantly smiled. Smiling is the best possible massage. Contentment is the fountain of youth.”
We need to practise the contentment extolled by the genial doctor, which is not the contentment of inertness, but the freeing of ourselves from entangling vanities,
