Today is my 75th birthday. A few ruminations on growing old, plus the Thanksgiving birthday pattern

I was born on November 22, 1948; for those of us born between the 22nd and 28th and have always wondered, here's how it works: the Thanksgiving Birthday Pattern.

A few quotes and poems, mostly gloomy,  on the subject of old age:

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

~ H. L. Mencken

Experience teaches that no man improves much after 60, and that after 65 most of them deteriorate in a really shocking manner. I could give an autobiographical example, but refrain on the advice of counsel.

 

~ H. L. Mencken (Baltimore Sun, 7 November 1948) 

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.  I can look back upon three-score and four years, in which little has been done, and little has been enjoyed, a life diversified by misery, spent part in the sluggishness of penury, and part under the violence of pain, in gloomy discontent, or importunate distress.   

 

~ Dr. Samuel Johnson (letter to Hester Thrale, 21 September 1773)  

Old age is like being on a plane flying through a thunderstorm.  Once you're aboard, there's nothing you can do. 

 

~ Golda Meir (attributed)

  

Growing old is no gradual decline, but a series of tumbles, full of sorrow, from one ledge to another.  Yet when we pick ourselves up, we find no bones are broken; and not unpleasing is the new terrace that stretches out unexplored before us. 

 

~ Logan Pearsall Smith (All Trivia, "Last Words") 

I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find - at the age of fifty, say - that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about...It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.

~ Agatha Christie

For age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away,

The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.

~ Longfellow, "Morituri Salutamus"

The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.

~ Clarence Darrow

How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young -- or slender.

~William James

Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.

~ Dr. Johnson

Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.

~ Thomas Jefferson

How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young -- or slender.

~ William James

For age is opportunity no less

Than youth itself, though in another dress,

And as the evening twilight fades away,

The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Morituri Salutamus

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch's statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

~ W. Somerset Maugham

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age. 

~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

When the loud day for men who sow and reap

Grows still and on the silence of the town

The unsubstantial veils of night and sleep,

The meed of day's labour, settle down,

Then for me in the stillness of the night

The wasting, watchful hours drag on their course,

And in the idle darkness comes the bite

Of all the burning serpents of remorse;

Dreams seethe; and fretful infelicities

Are swarming in my over-burdened soul,

And Memory before my wakeful eyes

With noiseless hand unwinds her lengthy scroll.

Then, as with loathing I peruse the years,

I tremble, and I curse my natal day,

Wail bitterly, and bitterly shed tears,

But cannot wash the woeful script away.

~ Alexander Pushkin, Remembrance

The spiritual eyesight improves as the physical eyesight declines.

~ Plato

So Life's year begins and closes;

Days, though short'ning, still can shine;

What though youth gave love and roses,

Age still leaves us friends and wine.

~ Thomas Moore, Spring and Autumn

But as usual, Shakespeare says it best:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.  At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school.  And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow.  Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth.  And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part.  The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound.   Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

 (As You Like It, Act II, Sc. 7)