Henry Miller: The Wisdom of Age Constitutes the Ability to Accept Reality
The wisdom of age constitutes the ability to accept reality, which is the knowledge of certain death -- substantial, personal, individual extinction. It no longer seeks to disguise the fundamental cruelty and terror of life because it is too weary for further struggle. It is not the acceptance of destiny so much, as the succumbing to it... It's not pessimism but a joyous acceptance of life!
-- Henry Miller
If at eighty you’re not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin’ and keepin’ power.
If you are young in years but already weary in spirit, already on the way to becoming an automaton, it may do you good to say to your boss — under your breath, of course — “Fuck you, Jack! You don’t own me!” …
If you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you’ve got it half licked…
At eighty I believe I am a far more cheerful person than I was at twenty or thirty. I most definitely would not want to be a teenager again. Youth may be glorious, but it is also painful to endure.
Moreover, what is called youth is not youth in my opinion, it is rather something like premature old age.
I was cursed or blessed with a prolonged adolescence; I arrived at some seeming maturity when I was past thirty. It was only in my forties that I really began to feel young. By then I was ready for it. (Picasso once said: “One starts to get young at the age of sixty, and then it’s too late.”)
By this time I had lost many illusions, but fortunately not my enthusiasm, nor the joy of living, nor my unquenchable curiosity.
Perhaps it was this curiosity—about anything and everything—that made me the writer I am. It has never left me. Even the worst bore can elicit my interest, if I am in the mood to listen.
With this attribute goes another which I prize above everything else, and that is the sense of wonder. No matter how restricted my world may become I cannot imagine it leaving me void of wonder.
In a sense, I suppose it might be called my religion. I do not ask how it came about, this creation in which we swim, but only to enjoy and appreciate it…
Perhaps the most comforting thing about growing old gracefully is the increasing ability not to take things too seriously.
One of the big differences between a genuine sage and a preacher is gaiety. When the sage laughs it is a belly laugh; when the preacher laughs, which is all too seldom, it is on the wrong side of the face.
The truly wise man — even the saint! — is not concerned with morals. He is above and beyond such considerations. He is a free spirit.
With advancing age my ideals, which I usually deny possessing, have definitely altered. My ideal is to be free of ideals, free of principles, free of isms and ideologies. I want to take to the ocean of life like a fish takes to the sea.
As a young man I was greatly concerned about the state of the world; today, though I still rant and rave, I am content simply to deplore the state of affairs. It may sound smug to speak thus but in reality it means that I have become more humble, more aware of my limitations and those of my fellow man.
I no longer try to convert people to my view of things, nor to heal them. Neither do I feel superior because they appear to be lacking in intelligence.
One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless. I believe that the ideal condition for humanity would be to live in a state of peace, in brotherly love, but I must confess I know no way to bring such a condition about.
I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in a way that would make animals blush.
The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men.
He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side…
I don’t believe in health foods and diets either. I have probably been eating all the wrong things all my life — and have thrived on it. I eat to enjoy my food. Whatever I do I do first for enjoyment.
I don’t believe in regular checkups. If there is something wrong with me I’d rather not know about it, because then I would only worry about it and aggravate the condition.
Nature often remedies our ills better than the doctor can. I don’t believe there is any prescription for long life. Besides, who wants to live to be a hundred? What’s the point of it?
A short life and a merry one is far better than a long life sustained by fear, caution, and perpetual medical surveillance.
With all the progress medicine has made over the years we still have a pantheon of incurable diseases. The germs and microbes seem to have the last word always. When all else fails the surgeon steps in, cuts us to pieces, and cleans us out of our last penny.
And that’s progress for you.
You can find these superb excerpts in Henry Miller's 1972 chapbook, On Turning Eighty. Unfortunately, it’s a difficult book to locate and/or insanely expensive due to only 200 printed copies in circulation.
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There is technology today that can scan and digitize the text of a printed book and convert the result into a digital book that can be read with Kindle, Nook, on a laptop, tablet, smart phone, etc. The free internet library, archive.org. holds such books for the public to read.
When my older daughter birthed her first child, her husband asked me what I wanted my grandchildren to call me? I said, "Grandfossil". That, and Sloan, is what my 4 grandchildren call me today.
I’m 81, and lots of my body parts don't work as originally designed, or hoped. I tried many times to be a successful lawyer, capitalist, stock market investor, and writer, but it wasn't in the cards or stars, and I became a successful trust fund baby and homeless person, depending on when I had inherited money.
When I was young, I didn’t fret about the state of the world. I was too busy trying to do what I liked and dodge what I disliked. I hated school, viewed it as being sent to prison 5 days a week. I felt the same about Sunday church sermons. I didn’t reach puberty when the other kids did, and that really fucked me up. I was good at football, baseball and basketball, but no way would I go in a locker room and get undressed. I focused on golf, fishing and hunting. I watched a lot of TV. I was deranged, basically.
Reaching puberty changed everything. I no longer hated or was terrified of girls. But I had lost my locker room sports skills. I was left with golf, fishing and hunting. I went to college and then to law school.
My first child, a boy, died at 7 weeks of sudden infant death syndrome. I was deranged, again. My work and love life went into the shitter. I tried working for my father, which was a mistake. I tried practicing law, which suited me a lot better, but was not a longterm solution. I plunged into 4-wall handball, racketball, tennis, white water paddling, karate, tai chi, and rugby.
I spent years trying to find myself and trying to fit into molds other people and I had built for me to wear. Nothing worked. My son had seen to that. I was years from being ready to thank him for that, when in my 45th year, I asked God to help me and I offered my life to human service, which turned out to be one of those be careful what you ask for moments. What followed was awful, but the alternative probably would have been far more awful.
Today, the state of the world and America distresses me. Not being able to do any of the physical sports, diversions, and love affairs with women that once made me feel alive and wanting to keep getting up in the morning, I’m left with playing chess and duplicate bridge in social groups and online, watching TV news reports and sports, Netflx and Prime movies and serials, and surfing the Internet and shooting off my mouth in forums and on my blogs, which get converted into books and go into the free internet library.
A gifted angel-harassed tech friend about half my age and I produce The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast, which is uploaded to YouTube and into the Torrent system, whose audiences are far more interested in something different than are YouTube audiences. The podcast is free and has no advertising or soliciting. The free internet library has a Torrent platform, and all of the podcasts are viewable there, as well as at numerous private torrent platforms.
We were kicked off Spotify, when the podcast was only audio. We were rejected by Rumble. We were frequently flagged at YouTube by people whose feelings we had hurt. We were banned from Russia, Belarus, Red China and about half of India. However, national Big Brothers cannot prevent people who know how to use Torrent from using it. So far, the last three podcast episodes combined have 820,000 complete watches at Torrent.
My various non-fiction, fiction, verse and stranger than fiction books at the free internet library are getting a lot more reads than my three mainstream consumer protection books published by Simon & Sçhuster/Prentice-Hall in the mid-1980s got. My body eventually will give up the ghost, but YouTube, Torrent, and the free internet library will allow me to shoot off my mouth for a bit longer.
Loved it. I no longer try to convert people to my view of things, nor to heal them. Neither do I feel superior because they appear to be lacking in intelligence.