The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1954-01-01
Just Among Ourselves
Passing Comment Considered or lncensiderais

Passing Comment Considered or lneensidersss
There may be value in the apparently silly fash
ion Of picturing the New Year as an infant and
the Old Year (aged fifty-two weeks as doddering
old man with long gray whiskers For while life
and time do not run so rapidly as all that they
do run on with extreme rapidity. And we need
reminder. Maybe the Baby New Year and the
Grandpa Old Year will serve to make us remember
We are all prone to forget the rapid pace of time
and to defer the labor we are to devote to the
work we are born to accomplish
-
Before young and old the mysterious thing called
the future appears to reach out endlessly Whether
We have for the future glowing hope or as is
the current fashion, groaning despair, ii in
far, far stretches. The future is long time. The
horizon towards which We are rushing with more
than the speed of ietplanes never seems to draw
whit nearer Life refuses to fall into narrowing
or better focused, perspective.
And yet can readily get the perspective for
one another. To the young man and woman people
of fifty seem ancient and hoary folk who should be
thinking of death and making ready for it. To the
person Of fifty, age and the need of concern about
the hereafter lie somewhere beyond sixty-five
And even at that age, is rather matter of
annuity than over eternity To
the man who has attained his three-score and ten
il appears true and timely saying that life be
gins at eighty"
Alexander Pope. in his Essay on Man, says,
Hope springs eternal in the human breast,
Man never is. but always to be blest.
The poet might as truly have said that man never
IS, but always TO be old" Nobody or, at any rate
scarcely anybody thinks OF himself as actually old
Everybody confidently expects to be old some day
some far off day. Nobody is willing TO notice that
the sands running rapidly out.
There are few things more fooishly pathetic than
the inane formulas OF speech that seek to caioe
the dodderer into the belief that he is as nifty
he was IN 1850 This was the refrain of song about
forty years ago Perhaps We should advance the
statement little and sing that the dspper gaffer
thinks "he Is much alive in 1895 The express
sions we refer TO- hail the old gentleman OF the
old lady as eighty tor more) years young" This
sort Of thing touches bottom in the Of what is
chesply ridiculous.
Television has brought before us long and
shaky procession Of old-timers who held the public
fancy occupied spots IN the limeight, many long
years ago And Of course, these worthy people
like the old gray mare amt what they used TO be
True, these TN appearances may mean little
needed income for the old folks who aren't at home.
This may excuse the appearances. But nothing
excuse the gushing of fMC'swho present these antique
personages with airy reference TO their youth.
1t is right to respect age. but il is hardly re
spectacle IN the aged to make public spectaces
Of themselves. And it is anything but reverent in
The TV to butter up decripit relics of another
day by patiently false compliments Only second
childhood could tolerate this ehildshness And
while wish long LIE and happy days to the Con
ME Macks, and the Sophie fuckers. and the Ted
Lewises and the rest think that they and their
flatterers who tell them how many years young"
hoy md hnM theV tonk sbnutd he
poyed in better business than that of trying to
entertain and amuse those who less well
stricken in years"
old Doctor Samuel Johnson was exceptional in
the fact that he was aware of advancing age In
deed, the Doctor morbid about It, which is as
bad at least as indulging illusions of youth. But,
we say the Doctor knew he old, and was
soon to face death To one of these jolly fellows,
TV Master of Ceremonies born ahead of his time,
who told him how strong and rugged he was, the
Doctor replied, "Ah, sir rugged old man is a
tower undermined"
And therefore it may be good thing for all of
us that the lads who do the magazine covers like to
represent the New Year as a baby and the old Year
as a bent and broken old man, The old man might
we'll remark TO the baby in the words of Hamlet,
To this figure you must come" And the fact that
the old man has come TO that figure in only sos
days points up the lesson wondrously. But people
hate TO learn lessons in school and out.
The Beginning and the End are Important
things, almost the only important things.
At least they most important. II we can
focus little fixedy on those beginning life's
journey and those its end, we may have the
good fortune TO lose sight Of those alien and art-
fcia classifications which concern us so poster
ngly,--sueh, for instance as the abomnahly named
teendgers. Maybe then even that peculiar class of
beings will fall into true perspective part of the
human that is born and that dies.
Those that have their life before them, like the
baby, and those who have most of il behind them,
like the old man, still at in this. that they
have everything waiting for themif they will take
IT, The extremes of youth and age ought to suggest
the meaningesSness and the futhty OF what lies be
tween, when this is considered in terms of careers
and glamour. and good times, and beauty, and
wealth, and influence and place in the public eye
The poet is right IN saying that is always 10 be
best Therefore he need not bother about the past
The old mans future Is eternal as the baby's He
need not look back sorrowfully, but forward with
sbounding hope.
And so We pick up our magazine at New Years,