Where nothing in a person's earlier years lends itself to an old age devoted to continuing intellectual and physical pursuits, a late-life interest in Tolstoy or even crossword puzzles is unlikely to appear, no matter the urging by well-intentioned social workers or people like me who write books about it.
Interpretation
Our early experiences shape our interests in old age, and it's unlikely to develop new intellectual pursuits later in life.
This quote emphasizes the idea that the interests and inclinations we develop in our youth significantly influence our later life. The author suggests that for those who have not cultivated a passion for learning or intellectual engagement earlier on, it is improbable that they will suddenly take an interest in complex subjects or activities, even with encouragement from others. Essentially, it reflects on how foundational our early years are to our lifelong pursuits and how ingrained habits may not change easily.
In practice
During a seminar on aging and education, one could use this quote to discuss the importance of early experiences.
Where the despair of loneliness and poverty haunts every hour, the optimism to embark on new projects cannot find a place to alight on the brain's cortex. Poverty itself is an enormous obstacle to an enlightened and enlightening - not to say healthy - old age.
Being someone who had had a very difficult childhood, a very difficult adolescence - it had to do with not quite poverty, but close. It had to do with being brought up in a family where no one spoke English, no one could read or write English. It had to do with death and disease and lots of other things. I was a little prone to depression.
I think when you think of death as being part of the life cycle and recognize that death is an inevitability for our species because the world has to be renewed with each death, then the hope becomes when it is renewed it will be renewed by people on whom I have had some influence for good.
Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.
The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it. This is a form of hope that we can all achieve, and it is the most abiding of all. Hope resides in the meaning of what our lives have been.
The dignity we seek in dying must be found in the dignity with which we have lived our lives.
When you love a problem, its contours, obstacles and resistances are all just part of its character.
Ignorance is a cure for nothing.
Know that all healing forces are within, not without! The applications from without are merely to create within a coordinating mental and spiritual force.
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.
Facts are ventriloquist’s dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.
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