Today has been unbroken; no one has filched the slightest part of it from me. The whole time has been divided between rest and reading.
A brief space has been given over to bodily exercise, and on this ground I can thank old age—my exercise costs very little effort; as soon as I stir, I am tired. And weariness is the aim and end of exercise, no matter how strong one is.
Do you ask who are my pacemakers? One is enough for me—the slave Pharius, a pleasant fellow, as you know; but I shall exchange him for another. At my time of life I need one who is of still more tender years.
Pharius, at any rate, says that he and I are at the same period of life; for we are both losing our teeth. Yet even now I can scarcely follow his pace as he runs, and within a very short time I shall not be able to follow him at all; so you see what profit we get from daily exercise.
Very soon does a wide interval open between two persons who travel different ways. My slave is climbing up at the very moment when I am coming down, and you surely know how much quicker the latter is.
Nay, I was wrong; for now my life is not coming down; it is falling outright. Do you ask, for all that, how our race resulted today? We raced to a tie—something which rarely happens in a running contest.
A brief space has been given over to bodily exercise, and on this ground I can thank old age—my exercise costs very little effort; as soon as I stir, I am tired. And weariness is the aim and end of exercise, no matter how strong one is.
Do you ask who are my pacemakers? One is enough for me—the slave Pharius, a pleasant fellow, as you know; but I shall exchange him for another. At my time of life I need one who is of still more tender years.
Pharius, at any rate, says that he and I are at the same period of life; for we are both losing our teeth. Yet even now I can scarcely follow his pace as he runs, and within a very short time I shall not be able to follow him at all; so you see what profit we get from daily exercise.
Very soon does a wide interval open between two persons who travel different ways. My slave is climbing up at the very moment when I am coming down, and you surely know how much quicker the latter is.
Nay, I was wrong; for now my life is not coming down; it is falling outright. Do you ask, for all that, how our race resulted today? We raced to a tie—something which rarely happens in a running contest.
—from Seneca, Moral Letters 83
I recall a classmate’s father once observing how the young folks wanted to drink so we could feel older, while the old folks wanted to drink to so they could feel younger. Though it seemed silly to me at the time, I now perceive a bit more about how the urge to become somebody else reveals the deepest confusion about the merits of simply being oneself. Everyone has his own peculiar way of playing at make-believe.
If, like Seneca, I can find the opportunity both to broaden my mind and to exercise my body, why am I still grasping for more? If I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, or my aching bones are slowing me down, it remains within my power to do my best with whatever has been given to me, and no amount of griping about the circumstances will change that.
It is one thing to joke about the frailty of old age, but quite another to despair of it. I am nowhere near Seneca’s seniority, and yet I have already noticed how the things we take for granted can so easily fade away. I probably reached my physical prime just before thirty, and I was mentally at my peak by forty; I am now at a point where various little bits are beginning to fail me, which I suspect will be followed, before too long, by various bigger bits.
Seneca and Pharius must have made for an interesting pair! I do not subscribe to the view that the old and the young can never understand one another, due to a supposedly insurmountable divide of generational perspectives. Where good will is present, the common bond of humanity will always shine through, that natural inclinations to know the true, to love the good, and to be at peace with the beautiful.
Whatever the reasons we might be losing our teeth, whether for the first time or for the last time, it is always possible to smile together in solidarity.
So this man is richer, and that man is stronger, and another happens to be swifter—and all of us are on one and the same journey, and that journey will wind down for all of us, whether sooner or later. In the meantime, we are called to making the trip more rewarding for one another. Stay sharp, because time’s a-wastin’!
I recall a classmate’s father once observing how the young folks wanted to drink so we could feel older, while the old folks wanted to drink to so they could feel younger. Though it seemed silly to me at the time, I now perceive a bit more about how the urge to become somebody else reveals the deepest confusion about the merits of simply being oneself. Everyone has his own peculiar way of playing at make-believe.
If, like Seneca, I can find the opportunity both to broaden my mind and to exercise my body, why am I still grasping for more? If I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, or my aching bones are slowing me down, it remains within my power to do my best with whatever has been given to me, and no amount of griping about the circumstances will change that.
It is one thing to joke about the frailty of old age, but quite another to despair of it. I am nowhere near Seneca’s seniority, and yet I have already noticed how the things we take for granted can so easily fade away. I probably reached my physical prime just before thirty, and I was mentally at my peak by forty; I am now at a point where various little bits are beginning to fail me, which I suspect will be followed, before too long, by various bigger bits.
Seneca and Pharius must have made for an interesting pair! I do not subscribe to the view that the old and the young can never understand one another, due to a supposedly insurmountable divide of generational perspectives. Where good will is present, the common bond of humanity will always shine through, that natural inclinations to know the true, to love the good, and to be at peace with the beautiful.
Whatever the reasons we might be losing our teeth, whether for the first time or for the last time, it is always possible to smile together in solidarity.
So this man is richer, and that man is stronger, and another happens to be swifter—and all of us are on one and the same journey, and that journey will wind down for all of us, whether sooner or later. In the meantime, we are called to making the trip more rewarding for one another. Stay sharp, because time’s a-wastin’!
—Reflection written in 12/2013
IMAGE: Tintoretto, Old Man and a Boy (c. 1565)
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