How can one have lines of age or weariness or discontent when one is happy, busy, never fatigued, and one's spirit is. ever, ever young? When I am tired it is not my soul, but just my body."
"We do not count a man's years," said Emerson, "until he has nothing else to count." It is not the years that age us so much as the use we make of them, and the way we live them. Excesses of any kind are fatal to longevity or the prolongation of youth.
Bitter memories of a sinful life which has gone all wrong make premature furrows in the face, take the brightness from the eyes and the elasticity from the step and mate one's life sapless and uninteresting.
The Bible teaches that a clean life, a pure life, a simple life, and a useful life shall be long. "His flesh shall be fresher than a child's. He shall return to the days of his youth."
We grow old because we do not know enough to keep young, just as we become sick and diseased because we do not know enough to keep well. Sickness is a result of ignorance and wrong thinking. The time will come when a man will no more harbor thoughts that will make him sick or weak than he would think of putting his hands into fire. No man can be sick if he always has right thoughts and takes ordinary care of his body. If he will think only youthful thoughts, he can maintain his youth far beyond the usual period.
If you would "be young when old " adopt the sun dial's motto — "I record none but hours of sunshine." Never mind the dark or shadowed hours. Forget the unpleasant, unhappy days. Remember only the days of rich experience; let the others drop into oblivion.
It is said that "long livers are great hopers." If you keep your hope bright in spite of discouragements, and meet all difficulties with a cheerful face, it will be very difficult for age to trace its furrows on your brow. There is longevity in cheerfulness.
Don't let go love or love of romance; they are amulets against wrinkles. If the mind is constantly bathed in love, and filled with helpful, charitable sentiments toward all, the body will keep fresh and vigorous many years longer than it will if the heart is dried up and emptied of human sympathy by a selfish, greedy life. The heart that is kept warm by love is never frozen by age or chilled by prejudice, fear, or anxious thought. A French beauty used to have herself massaged with mutton tallow every night, in order to keep her muscles elastic and her body supple. A better way of preserving youthful elasticity is coming into vogue — massaging the mind with love thoughts, beauty thoughts, cheerful thoughts, and young ideals.
If you do not want the years to count, look forward instead of backward, and put as much variety and as many interests into your life as possible. Monotony and lack of mental occupation are great age-producers. Women who live in cities, in the midst of many interests and great variety, preserve their youth and good looks, as a rule, much longer than women who live in remote country places, who get no variety into their lives, and who have no interests outside their narrow daily round of monotonous duties, which require no exercise of the mind. Insanity is an alarmingly increasing result of the monotony of women's lives on the farm. It is worth noting, too, that farmers who live so much outdoors, and in an environment much more healthful than that of the average brain-worker, do not live so long as the latter.
When Solon, the Athenian sage, was asked the secret of his strength and youth, he replied that it was "learning something new every day." This belief was general among the ancient Greeks — that the secret of eternal youth is “to be always learning something new.”
There is the basis of a great truth in the idea. It is healthful activity that strengthens and preserves the mind as well as the body, and gives it youthful quickness and elasticity. So, if you would be young, in spite of the years, you must remain receptive to new thought, and must grow broader in spirit, wider in sympathy, and more and more open to fresh revelations of truth as you travel farther on the road of life.
But the greatest conqueror of age is a cheerful, hopeful, loving spirit. A man who would conquer the years must have charity for all. He must avoid worry, envy, malice, and jealousy — all the small meannesses that feed bitterness in the heart, trace wrinkles on the brow, and dim the eye. A pure heart, a sound body, and a broad, healthy, generous mind, backed by a determination not to let the years count, constitute a fountain of youth which everyone may find in himself.