Once not long ago, a young man said to an older man a line, which he might have quoted from Bob Dylan. “Never trust anyone over 40!”
The older man’s answer was quick and simple. “Let us talk again when you are my age.”
And indeed, with time, the young man would see the older man’s wisdom. And as might have been predicted by the older man, all these would come to pass once the younger man had seen life from a “ripe age”; after he had lost his false sense of staying “young” forever, and once he had come to accept how truly short life is, how fast the travel of time.
By then both of them would have grown older. The younger man at some point before this would have seen how privileged he was to have grown old in a sense together with the older man. His father died when he was only 16 and he considered himself fortunate he lived in a culture that provided him many fathers to look to after he lost his own. He considered himself fortunate this way. But in time, he would see the older man pass away and still he would see how fortunate he was for that, albeit sadly so, but still fortunate.
People have this wrong notion that fathers are useful only for little children and only for that short time they grow through childhood. Only the young and innocent go by this wrong notion. In time, this, too, goes away. In time comes the realization that older men also explain to them the whole concept of growing old and the eventual fact of dying. Most fortunate is the man who has the most number of good models for this. All the better to prepare himself for that inevitable time. All the better as well to move him at an early time to resolve any confusion as to the point and usefulness of all this.
It helps for the younger man to contemplate what he now might say of the older man who passed way. Will he say: He took good care of his children? He lived the good life? He treated people well? He achieved all these? In due course, he might ask: What would I have other people say also when I do pass away?
Inevitably, this contemplation would begin from when the younger man said to the older man: Never trust anyone over 40. Then it might travel to when the younger man was himself 40 and the older man, even older, how they passed through a time when they were both still in the pink of health. Did they smile at each other to say how wonderful it is to grow old and come to understand the true nature of life?
The older man might have asked: What do young people know? They think they will live forever. And yet, see how secretly afraid they are of growing old. Soon they will feel themselves move slower, their body grow sicker, and then they will know the fear of death to a point of intimacy.
And the younger man might have nodded his head, and yet felt in his heart every year of his own true age and his own fears. And then he might have envied the older man for having passed through all that already, how all these are past him now. And then he might remember him having the gall one day to say to him straight to his face and over dinner: I have lived long enough that I am not afraid to die.
And then the younger man might have wished he could say those words for himself also. And why shouldn’t he say them now before he has grown too old? Other words echo into his head: Joy up to the very end. We will talk again soon, old friend.