Passage III

Growing Older and Getting Better

What will you be doing when you are seventy years old? If you're like as most people, and imagine yourself enjoying the relaxed pace of retirement. Consequently, growing old doesn't necessarily mean slowing down. (34) She is just one of those whom continued to be active well past the traditional age of retirement. Scientific research indicates that people live longer today than ever before.

Leo Tolstoy, the author of War and Peace, learned to ride a bicycle when he was sixty-seven, and his secretary's disapproval didn't diminish his fun. Tolstoy celebrated his seventieth birthday by taking a two-hour bicycle ride.

Grandma Moses didn't begin to paint seriously until she was in her seventies. At the age of eighty, she had her first solo art show. She painted for another twenty years. Her paintings are widely known and loved, and have been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe.

When he was fifty-one, Claude Pepper was defeated in his bid to reelecting to the U.S. Senate. More than ten years later he made a political comeback, winning a seat in the U. S. House of Representatives. There he devoted much of his energy to helping the elderly and the ill. Pepper's most influential years in Congress came after he was elected chairman of the House Rules Committee at eighty-two.

(41) When she turned one hundred, Daisy Farrington celebrated her one-hundredth birthday by taking her first plane ride. Pearl Taylor of California enrolled in Long Beach City College when she was eighty-eight. (44) Two years later, she won the vote and was elected Campus Queen.

Shortly before his death at ninety-six, cellist Pablo Casals reflected upon his life, saying, "For me, life grows more fascinating." The ability of fascination with what life has to offer and to be willing to try new things may be what keeps some of us active during what is often considered our "declining" years.