Of Age

It is commonly held that old age brings wisdom, and I have heard this proposition defended so often, by persons of such evident intelligence, that I have begun to wonder whether I am missing something. What I actually observe, in old men of my acquaintance, is not notably more wisdom than I found in them when they were young — it is, rather, the same mix of sense and foolishness, somewhat slowed, occasionally more patient, but not in any way that strikes me as a systematic improvement. The wise old man was, in my experience, a wise young man who has had more time to refine his wisdom and who has, fortunately, survived. The foolish old man was a foolish young man who has had the same time to refine his folly.

What age does reliably bring, I concede, is a diminution of the passions that made wisdom hardest to practice when we were young. We are less governed by desire, less moved by ambition, less subject to the violent urgencies of love and anger. This is perhaps what people mean when they attribute wisdom to age: not that the judgment has improved, but that the opponents of good judgment have weakened. The old man is calmer not because he sees more clearly but because he cares less fiercely.

“Age liberates us from the passions in the way that illness liberates a glutton from appetite: by removing the capacity, not by perfecting the will. I am not sure this is what those who praise the wisdom of age have in mind.”

I am, as I write this, not yet old — but I have begun to notice the first signs of what is coming. My knees ache in cold weather. I need more sleep than I did at thirty. My memory for names, which was never excellent, has become notably worse. These are small matters, and I report them without complaint; a man who expected his body to remain unchanged forever was not paying attention to his own nature. What I notice more than the physical diminutions is a certain quickening of the sense that there is not unlimited time. This, I find, sharpens attention rather than blunting it. I am less inclined than I was to sit through conversations that interest me not at all, less willing to read books that offer nothing, less patient with the kinds of elaborate ceremony that consume hours without providing any pleasure worth the name. Age has its freedoms.