Are You Getting What You Want out of Life?
OF ALL earthly living things, only man is a planner. Brainless, sightless vegetation does not plan. Animals are governed by instinct. If they build nests or dens for their young to be born in, it is only because instinct moves them to do it. Only man thinks seriously about the future, is concerned with it, works toward it.
And man alone has purposes above and beyond merely sustaining life and procreating. He has ideals, goals that he seeks to realize. Man’s abilities and potential surpass those of the animals a thousandfold and more. To realize his purposes man needs time, and that is why he alone of earth’s living things is consciously concerned with time. Tortoises and trees have no interest in watches or calendars.
How far into the future do your plans go? What do you hope to accomplish during your lifetime? Do you personally feel that your capabilities are being used to the full or will ever be? How many things are there that you would like to do, that you feel you are capable of doing—if you had the time?
Perhaps you would like to develop some talent, in music, the arts, literature or languages, or learn something about woodworking, mechanics, designing or architecture, or engage in studies in history, biology, astronomy or mathematics, or take up the cultivation of certain plants or the breeding of animals, birds or fish. Or possibly you would like to travel, to see new lands, get to know people of many places, develop new friendships, new outlooks. Many would like to do, not just one but a number of these things. Yet, because life is so short, what they actually do is very limited. The desire is there, nevertheless. Only the time is lacking.
Learning Ability and Creativity Outlast Man’s Body
There are so many reasons for desiring a longer life-span. Yet the idea is commonly held that human ability to accomplish worthwhile things just naturally starts coming to an end after a certain age, thus making a longer life of little value or purpose anyway. But is it a fact that learning power, thinking ability and creative talent must all fade after a certain point? No, the evidence is to the contrary.
At the age of ninety-nine Titian, the renowned painter, was still producing splendid works of art with “incomparable steadiness of hand.” Justice Holmes of the U.S. Supreme Court began the study of Greek at the age of ninety. At eighty-five, orchestral director Arturo Toscanini could still memorize the musical score of an entire opera. Were these men “finished,” “ready to die” at such advanced age? If they were, it was certainly not because they were no longer able to produce that which brought enjoyment to themselves and benefit and pleasure to others.
Showing the potential of human learning, Joseph C. Buckley, writing in The Retirement Handbook, says: “The drop in the ability to learn is so gradual that at eighty we still have the learning ability we had at the age of twelve.”
Supporting this are the results from research into the effects of age on mental capacity as reported in the article “Your Mind Improves with Age,” condensed from The American Weekly and printed in Reader’s Digest, January 1959. A group of 127 persons who as college freshmen had taken an intelligence test in 1919 were given the same test more than thirty years later. Their scores in the later tests were higher not only in general-information quizzes and in practical judgment, but also in tests requiring logic and clear thinking. In “concept mastery” tests, persons of average intelligence have kept getting higher scores right through their seventies and eighties. A University of Michigan study showed that memory and ability to learn do not steadily and uniformly decline with age any more than general intelligence.
Clearly, then, men could do so much, much more if physical weaknesses and illness did not hinder their productivity, and death did not cause it to cease as soon as it does. Often men are cut off just when they have really begun to develop a certain talent or have begun to get real insight into a matter.
Even if your interest in personal achievement—developing a certain talent or ability—is not so great, what of your interest in others, those you love, family, friends or your fellowman in general? Do you feel that you will have done all that you wanted for them by the time your years of life come to a close?
Really, who of us could willingly pick the time—the year and day—when we would like to spend our final hour with our marriage mate, son or daughter, or give them one last kiss? Could you? For that matter, when would you like to enjoy together with them for the last time the freshness of a spring day, the golden warmth of summer, the crispness of autumn or the quiet beauty of winter or share your last sunset or sunrise with them? These are not things you want to think about, are they? Not if you really love your family and friends, not if you care for them. For then you could never view with real approval the prospect of death’s bringing to a complete close your privilege of contributing to their happiness, doing things for them, sharing good things with them. How fine, how desirable it would be if your life with them could be extended far beyond man’s present life-span!
Interest in Mankind’s Future
You have lived long enough to see man’s rockets reach the moon and men walk on its surface. Yet today men cannot walk the earth in peace, free from danger, crime and violence. Would you like to live long enough to see this situation change, to live in a time when those around you are decent, considerate, lovingly helpful and sincerely interested in their neighbors? That change must come eventually or else mankind will cease to be, having continued its present destructive course to the point of global suicide. Surely this planet Earth, with its many unique provisions that make life possible, is not here just to become a massive graveyard throughout eternity.
You live in the age of the automobile, the jet plane, the mass-production industries. But you also live in the age of crowded, even choked and dying, cities; in the age of smog, of pollution of air, land, rivers and oceans. Would you like to live long enough to see brooks, rivers and lakes become sparkling clear again, to see fields and forests regain their natural beauty, to breathe air that is fresh, pure, fragrant? That, too, must come, and the present rate of contamination does not allow for the reversal of modern misuse of the earth to be delayed much longer—not if mankind is to survive.
You live in the age of mechanical hearts, heart transplants, kidney machines, the age of antibiotics. But disease keeps on, from migraine headaches to cancer and heart attacks. Would you like to live to see the day when disease is really conquered, when not only the major “killers” among sicknesses are wiped out but the very source of human aging, decay and death is removed?
In fact, if you could live in good health, in peaceful, pleasant surroundings, having satisfying, interesting work to do, opportunities to broaden and deepen your knowledge, and live among unselfish and enlightened persons, would you ever want life to come to an end?
As will be shown, there is reason to believe that men and women living today can hope to see these things, that they can hope to live, not just a few extra years, but many times longer than the present life-span of mankind. How can this be? Is such a hope reasonable, in harmony with known, scientifically established facts?
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There are so many things you would like to do for those you love. How fine it would be if life were longer!