Month: January 2026

Golden Years?

We have come to talk about old age and retirement as the “golden years.”  The current use of this term is relatively recent (1959) and usually dated to advertisements by Del Webb for the new “Sun Cities” sprouting up in Arizona and elsewhere.  In the past, however, the “Golden Age” referred to earlier and better times of men. Things were perfect in the Garden of Eden – and it was all downhill from there.

According to Ovid and the mythology of even earlier civilizations, including the Hindu and Judaic (Book of Daniel), the first age of man was the Golden Age, from which we have degenerated through the Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages.  Over time, according to ancient law, things got worse instead of better (as in the Second Law of Thermodynamics).

This was, in part, because early man hadn’t developed the cult of progress.  Until the Age of “Enlightenment,” there was no assumption that the world was “progressing.”  In fact, there had been an accepted notion that culture was deteriorating from an earlier “golden” time as noted above.  The Enlightenment changed that; progress was real, progress was good, progress became a god.  But, for the aged, this reversal also produced the paradox of a cultural ideology of progress juxtaposed with the reality of the aging body. (Think about that!)  But back to the “golden years.”

Of course, golden also has connotations of wealth.  And we often conflate a good old age with a financially rich one.  Theo of Golden, a recent bestseller, is a good read about an admirable elder, yes, but Theo is an old man with endless riches at his disposal.  And while it is true that Theo often uses his riches to help others, it is also true that he is not on a budget, nor does he worry about what happens if the cost of heating his house goes up dramatically.  Is money necessary for a good old age?  Do you need to have enough to buy friends and a house in Sun City?  “Better to go down dignified/With boughten friendship at your side/Than none at all. Provide, provide!” says the hag of Frost’s poem.

In years past, old people with money were generally depicted as misers.  One might think of Silas Marner, Scrooge, Uriah Heap, or Mr. Potter of It’s a Wonderful Life.  Now, gold is looked on as a necessity and not a flaw in old age.  Of course, capitalism has encouraged such a change – don’t hoard your money, spend it!

The highly underrated G. K. Chesterton had more naturalistic take (long before 1959) on the golden glow of old age:

Lo! I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold;
Grey hairs and golden leaves cry out
The year and I are old.

In youth I sought the prince of men,
Captain in cosmic wars,
Our Titan, even the weeds would show
Defiant, to the stars.

But now a great thing in the street
Seems any human nod,
Where shift in strange democracy
The million masks of God.

In youth I sought the golden flower
Hidden in wood or wold,
But I am come to autumn,
When all the leaves are gold.

Here, gold is a matter of perception, specifically a change in appreciation that comes with age – or so we would hope.  And the notion of progress is meaningless in the face of the cycles of nature.

Of course, we might also nod to Robert Frost again, who brings us back to the golden age being at the beginning of life and reminds us that the true gold is nothing that we can grasp:

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Our memories of early days are often golden.  We are nostalgic for our past, but our childhood Edens cannot stay nor be re-created.  They can only be recognized and remembered.  But it might be the wisdom of old age that makes us remember and finally realize that the real gold is in all Chesterton’s leaves and faces.  And that, perhaps, for us and for our planet, progress is overrated.

For other of my posts about the golden autumn of old age, you might try “Accepting the Season” or “Bare Ruin’d Choirs.”

Everything, Always at Our Fingertips

You know by now that I am somewhat of a Luddite and often rail against the effect that technology has had on our lives and our minds.  But, of course, there are many ways that technology has enriched our lives.  I was thinking recently about Willa Cather and Benjamin Franklin in this regard.

Willa Cather loved music.  In her fiction and in her letters, she recalls a time when music was hard to come by.  Surely there were local musical groups and piano players, but without the technology of records or tapes, symphony music was not available on the prairie, and when a touring symphony orchestra deigned to play in a place like Lincoln, Nebraska – well, people went and wept.  In 1917, Cather wrote this in a letter to a friend:

I never heard any music at all until I was sixteen, that means really none, and when I was seventeen I heard an orchestra and a symphony for the first time; —Theodore Thomas and the New World Symphony in Lincoln, Nebraska. He happens to mention that day and that performance in his published letters to his wife. It was a great day for me. (Letter to Katherine Foote Raffy, 1/17/1917)

There is a similar scene in Song of the Lark, and this touching scene in a story about a woman coming to the big city from the prairie and being taken by her nephew to hear a Wagner concert for the first time:

My aunt wept quietly, but almost continuously, as a shallow vessel overflows in a rainstorm…. The deluge of sound poured on and on; I never knew what she found in the shining current of it; I never knew how far it bore her, or past what happy islands. (“A Wagner Matinée”)

I think also of more recent times – as in 1957 when Glenn Gould played his first Bach concert in Russia.  The hall was sparse for the first half, and then after intermission – and many hurried phone calls by the listeners – the hall was overflowing.  No Gould recordings were available in Moscow, and every subsequent performance was SRO.  And now, anytime and anywhere, I can put in my earbuds and listen to any music as interpreted by any musician.  I can flood my home with the noise of a symphony or hear Glenn Gould muse over Bach while I read my e-mails.  I take this for granted – we all do.  And, unfortunately, it also makes the music less exciting.  It shouldn’t.

Part of the reason Ben Franklin became a printer was because it gave him proximity to books.  Even as a child, he grabbed whatever books came his way in the days before free libraries or cheap editions:

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books…. My father’s little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not fallen in my way since it was now resolved I should not be a clergyman. (Autobiography)

Later, he became part of a club in Philadelphia that shared their books, and Franklin soon expanded that into what is often credited as this country’s first lending library:

Those who loved reading were obliged to send for their books from England; the members of the Junto had each a few. We had left the ale-house, where we first met, and hired a room to hold our club in. I proposed that we should all of us bring our books to that room, where they would not only be ready to consult in our conferences, but become a common benefit, each of us being at liberty to borrow such as he wished to read at home. This was accordingly done, and for some time contented us.  Finding the advantage of this little collection, I proposed to render the benefit from books more common by commencing a public subscription library. (Autobiography)

Books were rare and precious commodities in earlier times.  Now we have immediate access to millions of books, and many of the classics of fiction and philosophy are available for free.  There are free libraries in most towns and those libraries often have inter-library loan privileges within the state – they also often have sites where digital books can be downloaded.  There may be a waitlist for current bestsellers, but for the really good stuff, there is no wait. (This truism could stand in almost all circumstances, I think!)  We are indeed fortunate.

On top of all this, we can hear the best of lectures and podcasts any time – and look at art from almost any of the world’s collections. But do we appreciate it?  Does the ubiquity of music and art and culture demean its worth?  If so, it is our own fault.  That wonderful book is not less wonderful because you can pull it up on your Kindle within seconds, and Bach and Gould should not be diminished because I can listen to them while doing the dishes.

In a way, this is a metaphor for all of life.  Miracles surround us every day, but we are used to them.  Nature creates far more splendid miracles than technology, but we are also jaded to that.  We are like spoiled children, who have too much to appreciate anything.  But we can change.  We can listen to the music, read the book carefully, be appreciative for the good things that technology makes available to us – and perhaps that will help us discard the parts of the digital world that compromise that appreciation.  If we old people – who remember what life was like before downloadable music, books, and movies – can’t appreciate the treasures that are there for us, surely there is no hope in this regard for the younger generations.

I’m as capable as the next old person of looking back fondly at the good old days, but I am also a person who suffered through the measles and mumps before vaccines.  One of my New Year’s resolutions is to foster an appreciation of what is good in these troublesome times, to nurture the sense of awe that Nebraskans felt when they heard their first symphony concert, but also to choose more mindfully from the digital cornucopia.

I have posted often about resolutions and the New Year – New Year’s Resolutions in Old Age, Baby New Year and Old Father Time, and New Year’s Re-Solutions.   On the subject of appreciating the world we’re living in, I would also recommend an article by Charles Mann, “We Live Like Royalty and Don’t Know It.”