In thinking of old age, the mistake is to assume that the spirit must decay
with the body. Of course, if the body is maltreated it will react on the
spirit. But the natural decline of the physical powers leaves the healthy
spirit untouched with age, should indeed leave it strengthened--glowing not
with passion but with a steadier fire. When we are young in years our eager
spirit cries for the moon.
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not.
But as we get older we learn to be satisfied with something nearer than the
moon. The horizon of our hopes and ambitions narrows, but the sky above is
not less deep, and we make the wonderful discovery that the things that
matter are very near to us. It is the homing of the spirit. We have been
avid of the "topless grandeurs" of life, and we return to find that the
spiritual satisfactions we sought were all the time within very easy reach.
And in cultivating those satisfactions intensively we make another
discovery. We find that this is the true way to the "topless grandeurs"
themselves, for those topless grandeurs are not without us but within.
Pages:
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169