原文地址：Chapter 15 HOW TO STAY YOUNG作者：飘飘
CHAPTER XV
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"[Pg 320] 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.[Pg
321]
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
ex-pression, 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[Pg
322] 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?[Pg 323] 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 be[Pg 324]gin
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.[Pg 325]
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[Pg 326] 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[Pg
328] 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[Pg 329] 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[Pg 330] 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[Pg 331] 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[Pg 332] 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[Pg 333] 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[Pg 335] 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[Pg 336] 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 influ[Pg 337]enced 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[Pg 339] 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 any[Pg 340]thing 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[Pg 341] 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[Pg
342] 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.
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