Page 35 - All India Magazine Jan-2025

Old Age

Young who are old and old who are young
There is one thing certain which is not clearly stated here, but
which is at least as important as all the rest. It is this, that there
is an old age much more dangerous and much more real than the
amassing of years: the incapacity to grow and progress.
As soon as you stop advancing, as soon as you stop progress-
ing, as soon as you cease to better yourself, cease to gain and
grow, cease to transform yourself, you truly become old, that is to
say, you go downhill towards disintegration.
There are young people who are old and there are old people
who are young. If you carry in you this flame for progress and
transformation, if you are ready to leave everything behind so that
you may advance with an alert step, if you are always open to a
new progress, a new improvement, a new transformation, then
you are eternally young. But if you sit back satisfied with what has
been accomplished, if you have the feeling that you have reached
your goal and you have nothing left to do but enjoy the fruit of
your efforts, then already more than half your body is in the tomb:
it is decrepitude and the true death.
CWM 3: 238

The weight of passing years
Only those years that are passed uselessly make you grow old.
A year spent uselessly is a year during which no progress
has been accomplished, no growth in consciousness has been
achieved, no further step has been taken towards perfection.
Consecrate your life to the realisation of something higher
and broader than yourself and you will never feel the weight of
the passing years.
It is not the number of years you have lived that makes you
grow old. You become old when you stop progressing.

All India Magazine, January 2025 35