Is it over? Are you feeling obsolete? Is there pressure to retire? Isn't your experience worth anything? Does that gray hair really mean something?
Benjamin Franklin, whose birthday anniversary we celebrate in February, was 70-years-old when he undertook the most difficult task of his life. He was 72 when he negotiated the treaty of alliance with France, which made victory and independence possible.
Franklin was 76-years-old when he negotiated the peace treaty with Great Britain, and at 81 he organized America's first anti-slavery society.
What makes a man obsolete? Franklin never became obsolete. With him, life began again at 70, for then he commenced a new and hazardous career. While in France, he was not only a diplomat, but he created the American navy, financed the revolution, and acted as judge in prize courts.
Some business concerns make it a rule that when a man reaches a certain age he must retire. They throw away mellowed experience. England held on to Disraeli and to Gladstone and to Balfour as long as they lived. Their value could never be measured by years. Their value lay in their eternal youth.
Who knows when age has come upon another? Is it gray hair? A faltering step? A stooping posture? Or is it when the mind loses virility? And where the sage who can speak with real wisdom in his early thirties?
Let no young man scoff at the men of years, for tomorrow passes and yet another day in gone. Each individual too soon finds that the calendar has to be torn, and a new one takes its place.
But each of us is ambitious to remain everlastingly youthful - to play gaily at 60, to be interested in all of life at 70, to keep one's wit at 80. Years are the artificialities of calendar makers. If the spirit is young, the years are not even remembered. If the spirit remains young, one can sing a song at 80 as at 18 - but at 80 it will have more meaning.
[First printed in The Voice in the Wilderness publication in August of 1978]
(For more....request "While the Evil Days Come Not" from The Voice in the Wilderness)
-Author Unknown
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