LIFE AT SEVENTY: Reflections of a Septuagenarian(Kenneth S. Woodroofe)

Last Sunday I celebrated my seventieth birthday. In this connection I would like to quote the remarks made by Somerset Maugham, theEnglish writer when he attained the age of seventy.

"When I was forty I said to myself 'That is the end of youth.' On my fiftieth birthday I said, 'It's no good fooling myself, this is middle age and may just as well accept it.' At sixty, I said, 'Now it's time to put my affairs in order, for this is the threshold of old age and I must settle my accounts.' But of all anniversaries I think the seventieth is the most momentous. One has reached the allotted span of man, and one can but look upon such years as remain to one as uncertain contingencies stolen while old Time with his scythe has his head turned."

I cannot help wondering what Imaoka Sensei thinks of this point of view. In his eyes I must still be a mere youngster. Maugham himself celebrated both his eightieth and ninetieth birthdays. So may be one's seventieth birthday is not so momentous after all.

This thought has been re-inforced in my mind by a visit I paid some months to Ibara and saw the museum where are housed the sculptures of Denchu Hiratsuka, the national treasure who, I understand is about 108 years old. He is reported to have said that the sixties and seventies are just boyhood and that real manhood begins at a hundred. In that case I am still a mere adolescent and one's seventieth birthday is not in the least momentous.

Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher, has suggested that the age of a man should be reckoned not only in terms of how long he has lived but also of how long he has yet to live. The snag about that is that I am not in a position to know how long I have yet to live! But the value of that point of view is that it shifts the focus of attention from the past to the present. What I am and what I do during the remainder of my life span, whatever it may be, is more important that how long I have lived or how long I am going to live.

Hiratsuka san is reported to have said: "I have so many things to do that I can never retire" and I, a mere youngster as compared with him, have that in common with him. I have not yet got to the point of looking back on my life and feeling that most of it is over.

The author of "The Cloud of Unknowing," the English mystical work of the 14th century wrote: "Not what thou hast been nor what thou art but what thou wouldst be, does God consider" and this is a point of view that I heartily endorse.

Of course my past lives within me and is part of me. I cannot detach myself from it nor do I wish to do so. But I do not wish to be bound by it. I do not live in the past as I am afraid some people do. My focus point is the present and what I can still do here and now where I am and with those with whom I have to do.

In assessing my life at this point I feel that I have been very fortunate in that I have had what I have come to regard as the essentials for a satisfactory and meaningful life.

I learned what those essentials were when I was quite a young man. When I was a cub reporter on the newspaper in my home town, there came into my hands a little book entitled "Essentials" by a quite unknown writer, Carnegie Simpson and I would like to acknowledge my debt so may years later to this little known man.

Carnegie Simpson stated very simply that the essentials in the act of living are something worthwhile to do and some one or something to love.

Many years later I learned that that psychological genius Sigmund Freud, said exactly the same thing. When asked what were the constituents of mental health, he replied: love and work.

Emerson has declared that the crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets or broad swords or canals or statues or songs. I have had that crowning fortune. I have had what I regard as something worthwhile to do. I have loved - and still love - my work as a teacher - and it has been an anchor for me in all the vicissitudes of life. To quote Shakespeare's memorable phrase: "the labour we delight in physics# pain," I know this to be true.

(Note: # physics: an old use of the word, now obsolete, meaning "heals" The noun physic is still used in the sense of medicine.)

To have something to do that employs your particular powers is to touch the springs of life. Aristotle's definition of happiness - the exercise of one's powers in the pursuit of excellence - is in my experience absolutely correct.

I have indeed been fortunate too in the second essential - something or some one to love for I have known, and know, what it is love and be loved.

I can truly say that I have had the most wonderful friends in England, America, India and Japan. In Japan, I have had such good friends. William James has said "Wherever you are, it is your own friends who make your world." That is so true. What would my world be without my friends? Dark and bleak and cold. But with them, it is warm and bright and full of sunshine. I realize how much I owe to them and in and through their friendship I can grasp the meaning of grace - something freely given, that we do not earn or merit or deserve. They have given - and give - freely of themselves to me and quite spontaneously I have given and give freely of myself to them in turn. I know from experience what William Morris meant when he said: "Fellowship is heaven and the lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life and the lack of fellowship is death, and the deed that ye do upon the earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them."

Indeed, in my view these two essentials embody the meaning of life for the meaning of life is not to be apprehended or contained in an intellectual proposition or a verbal formula. It is something to be experienced. It is when we are actualising what we are meant to be that we recognize that this is what life is for. It is when we are exercising our powers in the pursuit of excellence that we are supremely happy - and is not this happiness an indication that we are fulfilling the purpose of our lives?

And is not to love and be loved the greatest happiness? Is not this happiness too an indication that we are fulfilling the purpose of our lives? Arthur Clutton-Brock has summed it us splendidly. He says: "We are aware that we live, and fulfil the purpose of our lives in the relation of love, not in the relation of use; and we have a vision that shall be all love and not at all use which we call Heaven."

Arthur Gordon concludes his glorious little book "A Touch of Wonder", with the assertion that " in moments of discouragement, defeat or despair there are always certain things to cling to - things that are deeply felt or dearly loved."

"What one has deeply felt or dearly loved ": this is what sustains us in our darkest hours, for no one can take it away from us. It is beyond destruction's reach. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot put it out.