"So it is that I tell you that the best viaticum for old age is the one I mentioned in the beginning, to live according to Nature, doing and thinking what one ought. For so an old man would himself be most cheerful and would win the praise' of others, and being thus, he would live happily and in honor.
"But if anyone thinks that wealth is the greatest consolation of old age, and that to acquire it is to live without sorrow, he is quite mistaken; wealth is able to procure for man the pleasures of eating, and drinking and other sensual pleasures, but it can never afford cheerfulness of spirit nor freedom from sorrow in one who possesses it. Witnesses to this truth are many rich men who are full of sadness and despair and think themselves wretched—evidence enough that wealth is not a good protection for old age."
--Musonius Rufus, Lectures 17 (trans Lutz)
I was a child at the tail end of America's great splurge of prosperity. People who worked hard and applied themselves often had the pick of a career, and could usually go into retirement in reasonable comfort. I distinctly recall older men from my father's family speaking of that great moment when the work would cease, and the pension would begin. It seemed this was the dream, the goal for which I was to aim. Life would now begin at sixty.
It never helped, of course, that I chose a vocation where the possibility of saving for retirement was never really an option. I recall the moment, about fifteen years ago, when I did the math. Though salaried, I was earning less than minimum wage if I measured my work by the hour. I was offered a retirement package, but after I factored in the cost of family health insurance, I would have been bringing home less than $200 a week if I took the plan. A few years later, a new job 'temporarily' cancelled all employer contributions to retirement, as a cost-cutting measure, of course, and never restored them. It simply wasn't profitable for business. See how these Christians love one another.
Yet I still watch all the ads on TV, the ones that tell us that the single most important thing in our old age is our financial security. For a good slice of our money, of course, someone will manage our assets to insure that we will fade off into the sunset in a state of material bliss. We still haven't learned the lesson, obviously. Define a man by his money, and you make him a slave to money. We never even consider defining a man by his actions, and not by his possessions.
Let, us, by all means, live in as much worldly security and comfort as we can bear, but let us also remember that any of these things are just a means to an end. That end is living well, according to Nature, informed by wisdom and virtue. You cannot buy a retirement plan for this. You can only build it by becoming a true philosopher. I don't mean being like the professional blowhards, because they already have their reward. I means the real folks that have figured out how to live according to the goods of the soul.
There will be no gain if I make my fortune while I have lied, cheated, and stolen to acquire it. If there are victims, destroyed or discarded, on the road to my version of happiness, there is no happiness. To say that dying well is the true benefit of old age is hardly negative, but the most wonderful thing. The stress is on the dying well, because we will all die. Have I learned to live with wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice? Then I have lived well, and I may die well. Care little for the rest.
As I write this, I am what they now call middle aged. Yet given the struggles I have with my health, I must calmly expect that I am far closer to old age. I need not despair. Have I learned to live well, with a love of truth and charity, in the time given me? This is all that matters, and the struggle continues while we still breathe.
Written on 10/06/2015
Image: Gustave Doré , King Solomon in Old Age (1866)
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