Mr. Shailendra Kumar Upadhyay

The incidence of Alzheimer’s is 42% in Americans aged over 84. We may be able to science our way out of that, as we scienced our way out of the mass famines predicted by 1960s gloomsters such as Paul Ehrlich. We haven’t done so yet, though.

Some of us, such as Mr. Upadhyay, want to defy the aging process; not so much raging against the dying of the light as striding on forward regardless. This magazine’s proprietor is of the same kidney”€”well into his seventies and still a competitive sportsman.

Others insist that after a few decades of being useful in the world, one is entitled to put one’s feet up and watch the grass grow. Just as youth is said to be wasted on the young, this faction tells us, old age is wasted on the Upadhyays and Takis of the world.

The difference of opinion here can be passionate. The latter point of view was once vehemently expressed to me by a fifty-something friend in an otherwise humdrum conversation about Tennyson.

The great Victorian laureate wrote a poem titled “Ulysses.” We see the great adventurer in old age, pondering his life and wondering what to do with as much of it as is left:

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains…

At last he decides to go off adventuring again:

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

My friend took personal exception to this. “Silly old fool! Doesn’t he know that life has stages? That what’s appropriate at twenty is totally inappropriate at sixty?…”

(A sentiment Dr. Johnson seems to ratify: “Why, sir, our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child’s rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man’s whore.” Johnson was 56 at the time.)

I suppose it is ultimately a matter of temperament. Certainly I am not looking to try conclusions with our esteemed proprietor. To each his own, and we may honor those we don’t wish to follow.

For myself, the prospect of “life piled on life” seems appalling. One life is quite enough for me, and its last stretch, if granted, ought to be quiet and undemanding. So I’ll toast Mr. Upadhyay, but I shall not be emulating him.