Just Finished Reading: Travels with Epicurus – Meditations from a Greek Island on the Pleasures of Old Age by Daniel Klein (FP: 2012)

As I’m slowly approaching 60 – one day at a time – I’m inevitably thinking about old age, so the idea of the ‘pleasures’ of old age certainly intrigued me in the title. Pleasure? Really? I thought that all I had to ‘look forward to’ was increasing decrepitude followed by slow death….. OK, only partially kidding!

Anyway, I do feel that I have a vested interest in knowing, or at least appreciating, what’s coming, hence books like this (no doubt this sort of thing will be increasing in the, hopefully many, years ahead). The author, I quickly discovered, is not afraid to go against the flow – that prevailing belief that 60 is the new 40, that with the appropriate surgery, drugs, diet and exercise regime, we can run marathons into our 90’s and die whilst having sex with a beautiful 50 year old who looks like they’re 35. It’s the culture of bucket lists – the more adventurous and extreme the better – and grey power. In other words a culture in deep, very deep, denial about its fear of death – AKA our culture. Rather refreshingly the author will have none of it. Old age, maturity, is something to be savoured rather than avoided. It is something to achieve rather than put off for ever (if such a thing were possible!)

The vantage point of Old Age gives perspective on the folly of youth – and even more so on the folly of eternal youth. It allows you to slow down, not least because you have too, and savour the moment, to watch the sunset just because you can, the enjoy your meal rather than bolting it down because there’s three more things to tick off your bucket list before bedtime. Old age allows you time to sit and think, to ponder, to remember and reminisce, to converse with friends old and new to, rather paradoxically, take time to do things at their own pace without the crack of the metaphorical whip pushing you onto the next task and the one after that. Old age, the author contends, allows for companionship without the requirement of wanting or needing anything from the other people, but their time and their words or even just their presence and their companionable silence.

Approaching the end of life, like hanging in the morning, tends to concentrate the mind on the important things – not your position in the company hierarchy or how much money you have in the bank or what passes for achievement in this day and age. You focus, the author contends, less on what you are (or where) and more on who you are. You also let go of things too – and not just ambition. Surprisingly, at least to me, the author celebrated the decline of lust as a positive thing – basically no longer being at the whim of chemicals swimming about in your bloodstream. I suppose he was saying that, at long last, you are in place where it’s peaceful rather than subject to whatever your glands have in mind for you (just to mix up my metaphors and bodily parts a bit there). Oh, you can still appreciate beauty, it’s just that you don’t feel the need to do anything about it! Honestly, I did fall about laughing at this point though I did find myself almost, almost mind, nodding sagely…

As seems to be the way of things these days talk about death inevitably leads to God who is rejected for a more Secular (in some senses at least) Buddhist-lite approach to things – mindfulness and such like. This it seems to me is the modern western acceptable face of spirituality without all that messy religion stuff. Maybe it’s just me but I don’t really feel the need to fill the ‘gap’ left by a belief in God with some cobbled together ‘spirituality’ to ease the pain and the fear that creeps up on you in old age. But, as they say, whatever gets you through the night etc… Apart from a few wobbles like this I did find the book interesting, refreshing in many ways, and it did honestly give me a lot to think about. As I get older I might even read it again to see if my views change as I approach that dark night… Recommended.