Keep Journeying On

By Mrs. A.J. Wilder

“Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers,

Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past

And spreads its thin hands above the glowing embers,

That warm its shivering life blood till the last.”

Those lines troubled me a great deal when I first read them. I was very young then and I thought that everything I read in print was the truth. I didn’t like it a little bit that the chief end of my life and the sole amusement of my old age should be remembering. Already there were some things in my memory that were not particularly pleasant to think about. I have since learned that few persons have such happy and successful lives that they would with to spend years in just remembering.

One thing is certain, this melancholy old age will not come upon those who refuse to spend their time indulging in such dreams of the past. Men and women way keep their life blood warm by healthy exercise as long a they keep journeying on instead of sitting by the way trying to warm themselves over the ashes of remembrance.

Neither is it a good plan for people to keep telling themselves they are growing old. There is such a thing as a law of mental suggestion that makes the continual affirmation of a thing work toward its becoming an accomplished fact. Why keep suggesting old age until we take on its characteristics as a matter of course? There are things much more interesting to do than keeping tally of the years and waiting for infirmities.

I know a woman who when she saw her first gray hair began to bewail the fact that she was growing old and to change her ways to suit her ideas of old age. She couldn’t “wear bright colors any more” she was “too olds.” She must be more quiet now, “it was not becoming in an old person to be so merry.” She had not “been feeling well lately” but she supposed she was “as well as could be expected of a person growing old,” and so on and on. I never lost the feeling that the years were passing swiftly and that old age was lying in wait for the youngest of us, when in her company.

Of course, no one can really welcome the first gray hair or look upon the first wrinkles as beautiful, but even those things need not affect our happiness. There is no reason why we should not be merry as we grow older. If we learn to look on the bright side while we are young, those little wrinkles at the corners of the eyes will be “laughing wrinkles” instead of “crows feet.”

There is nothing in the passing of the years, by itself, to cause one to become melancholy. If they have been good years, then the more of them the better. If they have been bad years, be glad they are passed and expect the coming ones to be more to your liking.

Old age is not counted by years anyway. No one thinks of President Wilson as an old man. He is far too busy a person to be thought old, tho some men of his years consider their life work done. Then there is the white-haired “Grandmother of the Revolution” in Russia still in the forefront of events in that country, helping to hold steady a semblance of government and a force to be considered in spite of, or perhaps because of, the many years she has lived. These two are finding plenty to do to keep warmth in their hearts and need no memories for that purpose.

Perhaps after all the poet whose verse I have quoted meant it as a warning that if we did not wish to come to that unlovely old age we must keep on striving for ourselves and others. There was no age limit set by that other great poet when he wrote,

“Build thee more stately mansions, oh, my soul

As the swift seasons roll!”

It is certainly a pleasanter, more worthwhile occupation to keep on building than to be raking up the ashes of dead fires.

Mrs. A.J. Wilder. "Keep Journeying On." Missouri Ruralist (March 5, 1918): 10-11.  CLICK HERE to see this article as it originally appeared in the Missouri Ruralist.

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