Advice on how to grow old fre­quent­ly comes from such banal or blood­less sources that we can be for­giv­en for ignor­ing it. Pub­lic health offi­cials who dis­pense wis­dom may have good inten­tions; phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies who do the same may not. In either case, the mes­sages arrive in a form that can bring on the despair they seek to avert. Elder­ly peo­ple in well-lit pho­tographs stroll down gar­den paths, ball­room dance, do yoga. Bul­let­ed lists punc­tu­at­ed by dry cita­tions issue gen­tly-word­ed guide­lines for sen­si­ble liv­ing. Inof­fen­sive bland­ness as a pre­scrip­tion for liv­ing well.

At the oth­er extreme are pro­files of excep­tion­al cases—relatively spry indi­vid­u­als who have passed the cen­tu­ry mark. Rarely do their sto­ries con­form to the mod­el of abstemious­ness enjoined upon us by pro­fes­sion­als. But we know that grow­ing old with dig­ni­ty entails so much more than diet and exer­cise or mak­ing it to a hun­dred-and-two. It entails fac­ing death as square­ly as we face life. We need writ­ers with depth, sen­si­tiv­i­ty, and elo­quence to deliv­er this mes­sage. Bertrand Rus­sell does just that in his essay “How to Grow Old,” writ­ten when the philoso­pher was 81 (six­teen years before he even­tu­al­ly passed away, at age 97).

Rus­sell does not flat­ter his read­ers’ ratio­nal­ist con­ceits by cit­ing the lat­est sci­ence. “As regards health,” he writes, “I have noth­ing use­ful to say…. I eat and drink what­ev­er I like, and sleep when I can­not keep awake.” (We are inclined, per­haps, to trust him on these grounds alone.) He opens with a dri­ly humor­ous para­graph in which he rec­om­mends, “choose your ances­tors well,” then he issues advice on the order of not dwelling on the past or becom­ing a bur­den to your chil­dren.

But the true ker­nel of his short essay, “the prop­er recipe for remain­ing young,” he says, came to him from the exam­ple of a mater­nal grand­moth­er, who was so absorbed in her life, “I do not believe she ever had time to notice she was grow­ing old.” “If you have wide and keen inter­ests and activ­i­ties in which you can still be effec­tive,” Rus­sell writes. “you will have no rea­son to think about the mere­ly sta­tis­ti­cal fact of the num­ber of years you have already lived, still less of the prob­a­ble short­ness of your future.”

Such inter­ests, he argues, should be “imper­son­al,” and it is this qual­i­ty that loosens our grip. As Maria Popo­va puts it, “Rus­sell places at the heart of a ful­fill­ing life the dis­so­lu­tion of the per­son­al ego into some­thing larg­er.” The idea is famil­iar; in Russell’s hands it becomes a med­i­ta­tion on mor­tal­i­ty as ever-time­ly as the so-often-quot­ed pas­sages from Donne’s “Med­i­ta­tion XVII.” Philoso­pher and writer John G. Messer­ly calls Russell’s con­clud­ing pas­sage “one of the most beau­ti­ful reflec­tions on death I have found in all of world lit­er­a­ture.”

The best way to over­come it [the fear of death]—so at least it seems to me—is to make your inter­ests grad­u­al­ly wider and more imper­son­al, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increas­ing­ly merged in the uni­ver­sal life. An indi­vid­ual human exis­tence should be like a riv­er: small at first, nar­row­ly con­tained with­in its banks, and rush­ing pas­sion­ate­ly past rocks and over water­falls. Grad­u­al­ly the riv­er grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more qui­et­ly, and in the end, with­out any vis­i­ble break, they become merged in the sea, and pain­less­ly lose their indi­vid­ual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suf­fer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will con­tin­ue. And if, with the decay of vital­i­ty, weari­ness increas­es, the thought of rest will not be unwel­come. I should wish to die while still at work, know­ing that oth­ers will car­ry on what I can no longer do and con­tent in the thought that what was pos­si­ble has been done.

Read Russell’s “How to Grow Old” in full here. And see many more elo­quent med­i­ta­tions on aging and death—from Hen­ry Miller, André Gide, Ursu­la K. Le Guin, and Grace Paley—at Brain Pick­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Bertrand Russell’s Advice to Peo­ple Liv­ing 1,000 Years in the Future: “Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish”

Bertrand Rus­sell: The Every­day Ben­e­fit of Phi­los­o­phy Is That It Helps You Live with Uncer­tain­ty

Bertrand Rus­sell Author­i­ty and the Indi­vid­ual (1948) 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Image by Steve Ander­son, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

At first blush, Hunter S. Thomp­son might be the last per­son you would want to ask for advice. After all, his dai­ly rou­tine involved copi­ous amounts of cocaine, LSD and Chivas Regal. He once raked a neighbor’s house with gun­fire. And he once almost acci­den­tal­ly blew up John­ny Depp. Yet beneath his gonzo per­sona lay a man who thought deeply and often about the mean­ing of it all. He was some­one who spent a life­time star­ing into the abyss.

So in 1958, before he became a counter-cul­ture icon, before he even start­ed writ­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly, Thomp­son wrote a long let­ter about some of the big ques­tions in life to his friend, Hume Logan, who was in the throes of an exis­ten­tial cri­sis.

While the first cou­ple of para­graphs warns against the dan­gers of seek­ing advice, Hunter then expounds at length on some deep, and sur­pris­ing­ly lev­el-head­ed truths. Below are a few pearls of wis­dom:

• Whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly at one time in our lives. So few peo­ple under­stand this!
• You might also try some­thing called Being and Noth­ing­ness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and anoth­er lit­tle thing called Exis­ten­tial­ism: From Dos­toyevsky to Sartre. These are mere­ly sug­ges­tions. If you’re gen­uine­ly sat­is­fied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleep­ing dogs lie.)
• To put our faith in tan­gi­ble goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. We do not strive to be fire­men, we do not strive to be bankers, nor police­men, nor doc­tors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.
• Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to fol­low (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real pur­pose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.
• Is it worth giv­ing up what I have to look for some­thing bet­ter? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that deci­sion but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward mak­ing the choice.

The let­ter was pub­lished in the 2013 book, Let­ters of Note. You can read it in its entire­ty below.

April 22, 1958
57 Per­ry Street
New York City

Dear Hume,

You ask advice: ah, what a very human and very dan­ger­ous thing to do! For to give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies some­thing very close to ego­ma­nia. To pre­sume to point a man to the right and ulti­mate goal— to point with a trem­bling fin­ger in the RIGHT direc­tion is some­thing only a fool would take upon him­self.

I am not a fool, but I respect your sin­cer­i­ty in ask­ing my advice. I ask you though, in lis­ten­ing to what I say, to remem­ber that all advice can only be a prod­uct of the man who gives it. What is truth to one may be dis­as­ter to anoth­er. I do not see life through your eyes, nor you through mine. If I were to attempt to give you spe­cif­ic advice, it would be too much like the blind lead­ing the blind.

“To be, or not to be: that is the ques­tion: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suf­fer the slings and arrows of out­ra­geous for­tune, or to take arms against a sea of trou­bles … ” (Shake­speare)

And indeed, that IS the ques­tion: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly at one time in our lives. So few peo­ple under­stand this! Think of any deci­sion you’ve ever made which had a bear­ing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been any­thing but a choice how­ev­er indi­rect— between the two things I’ve men­tioned: the float­ing or the swim­ming.

But why not float if you have no goal? That is anoth­er ques­tion. It is unques­tion­ably bet­ter to enjoy the float­ing than to swim in uncer­tain­ty. So how does a man find a goal? Not a cas­tle in the stars, but a real and tan­gi­ble thing. How can a man be sure he’s not after the “big rock can­dy moun­tain,” the entic­ing sug­ar-can­dy goal that has lit­tle taste and no sub­stance?

The answer— and, in a sense, the tragedy of life— is that we seek to under­stand the goal and not the man. We set up a goal which demands of us cer­tain things: and we do these things. We adjust to the demands of a con­cept which CANNOT be valid. When you were young, let us say that you want­ed to be a fire­man. I feel rea­son­ably safe in say­ing that you no longer want to be a fire­man. Why? Because your per­spec­tive has changed. It’s not the fire­man who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reac­tions to expe­ri­ence. As your expe­ri­ences dif­fer and mul­ti­ply, you become a dif­fer­ent man, and hence your per­spec­tive changes. This goes on and on. Every reac­tion is a learn­ing process; every sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence alters your per­spec­tive.

So it would seem fool­ish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a dif­fer­ent angle every day? How could we ever hope to accom­plish any­thing oth­er than gal­lop­ing neu­ro­sis?

The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all, or not with tan­gi­ble goals, any­way. It would take reams of paper to devel­op this sub­ject to ful­fill­ment. God only knows how many books have been writ­ten on “the mean­ing of man” and that sort of thing, and god only knows how many peo­ple have pon­dered the sub­ject. (I use the term “god only knows” pure­ly as an expres­sion.) There’s very lit­tle sense in my try­ing to give it up to you in the prover­bial nut­shell, because I’m the first to admit my absolute lack of qual­i­fi­ca­tions for reduc­ing the mean­ing of life to one or two para­graphs.

I’m going to steer clear of the word “exis­ten­tial­ism,” but you might keep it in mind as a key of sorts. You might also try some­thing called Being and Noth­ing­ness by Jean-Paul Sartre, and anoth­er lit­tle thing called Exis­ten­tial­ism: From Dos­toyevsky to Sartre. These are mere­ly sug­ges­tions. If you’re gen­uine­ly sat­is­fied with what you are and what you’re doing, then give those books a wide berth. (Let sleep­ing dogs lie.) But back to the answer. As I said, to put our faith in tan­gi­ble goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be fire­men, we do not strive to be bankers, nor police­men, nor doc­tors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don’t mis­un­der­stand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE fire­men, bankers, or doc­tors— but that we must make the goal con­form to the indi­vid­ual, rather than make the indi­vid­ual con­form to the goal. In every man, hered­i­ty and envi­ron­ment have com­bined to pro­duce a crea­ture of cer­tain abil­i­ties and desires— includ­ing a deeply ingrained need to func­tion in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE some­thing; he has to mat­ter.

As I see it then, the for­mu­la runs some­thing like this: a man must choose a path which will let his ABILITIES func­tion at max­i­mum effi­cien­cy toward the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of his DESIRES. In doing this, he is ful­fill­ing a need (giv­ing him­self iden­ti­ty by func­tion­ing in a set pat­tern toward a set goal), he avoids frus­trat­ing his poten­tial (choos­ing a path which puts no lim­it on his self-devel­op­ment), and he avoids the ter­ror of see­ing his goal wilt or lose its charm as he draws clos­er to it (rather than bend­ing him­self to meet the demands of that which he seeks, he has bent his goal to con­form to his own abil­i­ties and desires).

In short, he has not ded­i­cat­ed his life to reach­ing a pre-defined goal, but he has rather cho­sen a way of life he KNOWS he will enjoy. The goal is absolute­ly sec­ondary: it is the func­tion­ing toward the goal which is impor­tant. And it seems almost ridicu­lous to say that a man MUST func­tion in a pat­tern of his own choos­ing; for to let anoth­er man define your own goals is to give up one of the most mean­ing­ful aspects of life— the defin­i­tive act of will which makes a man an indi­vid­ual.

Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to fol­low (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real pur­pose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH.

Nat­u­ral­ly, it isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’ve lived a rel­a­tive­ly nar­row life, a ver­ti­cal rather than a hor­i­zon­tal exis­tence. So it isn’t any too dif­fi­cult to under­stand why you seem to feel the way you do. But a man who pro­cras­ti­nates in his CHOOSING will inevitably have his choice made for him by cir­cum­stance.

So if you now num­ber your­self among the dis­en­chant­ed, then you have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seri­ous­ly seek some­thing else. But beware of look­ing for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a liv­ing WITHIN that way of life. But you say, “I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.”

And there’s the crux. Is it worth giv­ing up what I have to look for some­thing bet­ter? I don’t know— is it? Who can make that deci­sion but you? But even by DECIDING TO LOOK, you go a long way toward mak­ing the choice.

If I don’t call this to a halt, I’m going to find myself writ­ing a book. I hope it’s not as con­fus­ing as it looks at first glance. Keep in mind, of course, that this is MY WAY of look­ing at things. I hap­pen to think that it’s pret­ty gen­er­al­ly applic­a­ble, but you may not. Each of us has to cre­ate our own cre­do— this mere­ly hap­pens to be mine.

If any part of it doesn’t seem to make sense, by all means call it to my atten­tion. I’m not try­ing to send you out “on the road” in search of Val­hal­la, but mere­ly point­ing out that it is not nec­es­sary to accept the choic­es hand­ed down to you by life as you know it. There is more to it than that— no one HAS to do some­thing he doesn’t want to do for the rest of his life. But then again, if that’s what you wind up doing, by all means con­vince your­self that you HAD to do it. You’ll have lots of com­pa­ny.

And that’s it for now. Until I hear from you again, I remain,

your friend,
Hunter

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Feb­ru­ary 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Deca­dent Dai­ly Break­fast: The “Psy­chic Anchor” of His Fre­net­ic Cre­ative Life

How Hunter S. Thomp­son Gave Birth to Gonzo Jour­nal­ism: Short Film Revis­its Thompson’s Sem­i­nal 1970 Piece on the Ken­tucky Der­by

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.