MANY of you know what a 26½ hour fast entails and will appreciate how difficult it is to listen to the Rabbi impart his message one hour before the fasting ends. Mouths are dry and tummies are rumbling!
This year I was captivated by what Rabbi Ash of the Beit Emanuel Progressive Synagogue had to say, so much so, that I asked and obtained his permission to share this with you.
His message strongly supports much of what I’ve written about over the past few years, but I could not have expressed it as well or written it better.
The process of ageing is not a subject that addressed itself with the same urgency to us all. We are all at different stages on the highway that leads from birth to death: Whether we are at the beginning, halfway, or nearing the end, we all travel along it, in the same direction, for it is a one- way road. The last stage of the journey concerns us all. Like every other phase of life, it has its peculiar difficulties but also its peculiar advantages and opportunities.
The difficulties are obvious. As we grow old, our physical powers decline: we may become less mobile, our senses may become less acute, our aches and pains more numerous. We may forget much of what we once knew, and find it harder to learn new things. Our circle of friends may grow smaller; our savings may run low; we may have to give up some of our privacy for sheltered housing or nursing care and an increased dependence on others.
These difficulties are formidable, but there are compensating advantages. As we grow older, we are less driven by passions, and by ambition, less likely to behave impulsively. We gain experience and knowledge, and we are better able to tell what matters from what doesn’t matter. We gain, or we should gain, in composure, discretion and judgment. We may even be respected for our wisdom, and our advice may be sought. We also have more leisure to do the things we always wanted to do, to cultivate old interests and to take up new ones; and though we have less to look forward to, we have more to look back on. Faced with this mixture of advantages and disadvantages, people react in very different ways. Some grow old gracefully. They become sweeter, gentler, more tranquil in themselves and more considerate of others. Other people become increasingly irritable, resentful, egocentric, demanding of attention, and tired of living.
Why do some people cope so well, and others so badly, with old age? A large part of the answer must lie in individual circumstances. For the mixture of assets and liabilities is not the same for all. Some are more fortunate than others — and we should never condemn the less fortunate and should show respect for the aged.
Therefore we might ask: What are the attitudes which we should cultivate within ourselves in order that, when the time comes, we may cope well with the process of ageing?
We should try to look on growing old not as something that just happens to us, of which we are passive victims, but that is, like every other phase of life, a challenge, a test to be performed, a job to be done, which can be done well or badly, and which we must work out if we wish to do it well.
We should cultivate a habit of gratitude for what has been and to what still is. We know, as we grow older, that we have had abilities which are now declining, that we have had opportunities which will never come again, and that we have made mistakes which we can no longer put right. But we need not dwell on these negative aspects. They are past and gone.
We should, throughout our lives, develop interests independent of our employment. These we can pursue when we retire. It is a very sad fact that many old people seem to have no such interests. It is also an indictment of many societies that they encourage the view that virtually the sole purpose of education is to make us employable. Education should be for living, not only for earning a living.
Just as we need to cultivate interests, so we need to cultivate friendships. The world is full of lonely people whose greatest need is for human companionship but who make little effort to obtain it. They think of friendship as something which must come to them, while they sit, passive, in their armchairs. If it doesn’t come, they complain that nobody cares, and when others do take the initiative, and visit them, they see it as an opportunity to pour out their woes. They forget that friendship is a matter of giving as well as taking.
Then there is a further problem, it is perhaps the deepest of them all. Many old people complain, not only that they have few pleasures and few friends, but that they have no wish to go on living. If they are in constant pain, that is indeed understandable. But in other circumstances, the wish to die — which is so contrary to the instinct of self- preservation — is a symptom of a deeper problem.
Is life ever without a purpose? Surely not. There are always mitzvoth/deeds to perform and, especially, the greatest of them all, “you shall love your neighbour as yourself”. The purpose of life is so that we may love one another.