On the Pleasures of No Longer Being Very Young by G.K. Chesterton

अनुक्रम (Contents)

On the Pleasures of No Longer Being Very Young Summary by G.K. Chesterton

On the Pleasures of No Longer Being Very Young Summary by G.K. Chesterton – There are advantages of being old but people generally refer to old age in sentimental terms. They describe old age as the stage of life when a man acquires beautiful snowy beards like Father Christmas or finds wisdom like Nestor. But this is not enough. This is not the real advantage of getting old. If only this much is stated about old age, the young people cannot understand the real importance of old age. White beard and profound wisdom generally associated with old age is actually stated in praise of it. We cannot say that all old men are really very wise. They may retain childishness and cheerful innocence till their old age. Like wise, some old men may be found to be even more romantic and adventurous then young men. So, the real benefit of old age does not consist in its eulogistic praise. It must be seen elsewhere.

The first pleasure of growing old is that we begin to see significance or find life in traditions, maxims, and manners that appeared to be dead in our youth. It appears that the world grows young as we grow old. In our youth the world appeared to be old because its traditions and customs seemed to be dull and useless, but as we advance in years we begin to discover real significance of those customs and understand. Their importance in our life for which the youth did not care. Proverbs also reveal their true meaning in our old age. In our youth we used to ignore these proverbs as mere proverbial sayings, but in our old age we discover that these proverbs epitomize the experience and wisdom of a whole generation In this way the dead proverbs come alive. Tradition of knowledge from youth to old age is like transition from inorganic to organic. It is like stone snakes and birds of ancient Egyptian inscription beginning to leap about like living things. We mean to say that when man grows old, he begins to understand the real importance of all those things which seemed dead or dull in his youthful days.

Another advantage of old age is that man in this stage of his life understands the meaning of modernity. Youth people cannot realize the new world, the moderns do not realize modernity. The reason is that the young people have not seen anything else to compare it with their new world. They are, as if it were, standing on a moving platform and therefore cannot understand motion, as a man cannot feel the daily movement of the earth. The older generation consists of the people who feel sharply and clearly the epoch which is beginning for they were there before it began. It is one of the artistic advantages of the aged that they do see the new things relieved sharply against a background, their shape definite and distinct.

Attitude towards religion also changes with advancing age. During childhood and youth people want to church out of snobbishness, thinking themselves superior to those who did not go there. But when old age comes, the mental framework changes and the church seems once more to be thronged with believers. The superiority feeling of church-goers vanishes giving place to devotion. Likewise, the belief in the existence of ghosts also changes. People who believed in ghosts later on realize that the world has moved away from the supernatural, but it is the old man who knows in what direction the world has really moved.

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