When I was younger my father, who I didn’t consider a well-educated man
at the time, once told me: “Son, if you live long enough, you’ll be old!” How true his words have turned out to be!
Have you ever asked yourself, “What kind of a man shall I be tomorrow?” “Oh, about the same kind of a man that I am
now”, should be your answer. The kind of
a man (or woman) that I shall be next month depends upon the kind of a man (or
woman) that I am preparing myself to be this month.
If
I am miserable today, it is not within the round of probabilities that I shall
be supremely happy tomorrow. You have probably heard it said, “Practice makes
perfect.” However, you can “practice”
something WRONG all day long and you will not be any closer to perfection than you
were when you started. You cannot do the
same thing over and over again the same way and expect to get a different result!
Everyday life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation
for the future is to live as if there were none! This may sound strange, but consider: “If you
want your life to improve and be better when you are older, you must begin NOW
to make it that way in the future. How
many of us have looked back on our lives and wished that we had done things
differently when we were younger? There’s
probably more of us than want to admit it.
In
this present world, we are preparing all the time for old age. From the moment
of our birth, we begin to age. That is a
biological fact! There are none of us
who can escape it. However, being older
doesn’t have to the “down” side of our lives.
The two things that make old age beautiful are resignation and a just
consideration for the rights of others.
In
the play of Ivan the Terrible, the interest centers around one man, the Czar
Ivan. If anybody but Richard Mansfield
played the part, there would be nothing in it. We simply get a glimpse into the life of a
tyrant who has run the full gamut of grumpiness, selfishness and grouch. Incidentally this man had the power to put
other men to death, and this he does and has done as his whim and temper might
dictate. He has been vindictive, cruel,
quarrelsome, tyrannical and terrible. Now
that he feels the approach of death, he would make his peace with God. But he has delayed that matter too long. He didn't realize in youth and middle life
that he was then preparing for his old age and the consequences of his earlier
actions.
Man
is the result of cause and effect, and the causes are to a degree in our hands.
Life is a fluid, and well has it been
called the stream of life we are going, flowing somewhere. Strip Ivan of his robes and crown, and he
might be an old farmer and live in Ebenezer. Every town and village have its own Ivan
counter-part. To be an Ivan, just turn
your temper loose and practice cruelty on any person or thing within your
reach, and the result will be a sure preparation for a querulous, quarrelsome,
pickety, snippety, fussy and foolish old age, accented with many outbursts of
wrath that are terrible in their futility and ineffectiveness.
Babyhood
has no monopoly on the tantrum. The
characters of King Lear and Ivan the Terrible have much in common. One might almost believe that the writer of
Ivan had felt the incompleteness of Lear, and had seen the absurdity of making
a melodramatic bid for sympathy in behalf of this old man thrust out by his
daughters. Lear, the troublesome, Lear
to whose limber tongue there was constantly leaping words unprintable and names
of tar, deserves no soft pity at our hands. All his life he had been training his three
daughters for exactly the treatment he was to receive. All his life Lear had been lubricating the
chute that was to give him a quick ride out into that black midnight storm. "Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth
it is to have a thankless child," he cries. There is something quite as bad as a thankless
child, and that is a thankless parent an irate, irascible parent who possesses
an underground vocabulary and a disposition to use it.
The
false note in Lear lies in giving to him a daughter like Cordelia. Tolstoy and Mansfield ring true, and Ivan the
Terrible is what he is without apology, excuse or explanation. Take it or leave it if you do not like plays
of this kind, go to see Vaudeville or some other comedy. Or perhaps you are the type to consider
something from the Marvel Universe!
Mansfield's
Ivan is terrible. The Czar is not old in
years not over seventy but you can see that Death is sniffing close upon his
track. Ivan has lost the power of
repose. He cannot listen, weigh and
decide he has no thought or consideration for any man or thing this is his
habit of life. His bony hands are never
still the fingers open and shut, and pick at things eternally. He fumbles the cross on his breast, adjusts
his jewels, scratches his cosmos, plays the devil's tattoo, gets up nervously
and looks behind the throne, holds his breath to listen. When people address him, he damns them
savagely if they kneel, and if they stand upright, he accuses them of lack of
respect. He asks that he be relieved
from the cares of state, and then trembles for fear his people will take him at
his word. When asked to remain ruler of
Russia he proceeds to curse his councilors and accuses them of loading him with
burdens that they themselves would not endeavor to bear.
He
is a victim of amor senilis, and right here if Mansfield took one step more his
realism would be appalling, but he stops in time and suggests what he dares not
express. This tottering, doddering,
slobbering, sniffling old man is in love he is about to wed a young, beautiful
girl. He selects jewels for her he makes
remarks about what would become her beauty, jeers and laughs in cracked
falsetto. In the animality of youth
there is something pleasing it is natural but the vices of an old man, when
they have become only mental, are most revolting.
The
people about Ivan are in mortal terror of him, for he is still the absolute
monarch he has the power to promote or disgrace, to take their lives or let
them go free. They laugh when he laughs,
cry when he does, and watch his fleeting moods with thumping hearts. He is intensely religious and affects the robe
and cowl of a priest. Around his neck
hangs the crucifix. His fear is that he
will die with no opportunity of confession and absolution. He prays to High Heaven every moment, kisses
the cross, and his toothless old mouth interjects prayers to God and curses on
man in the same breath.
If
anyone is talking to him, he looks the other way, slips down until his
shoulders occupy the throne, scratches his leg, and keeps up a running comment
of insult "Aye," "Oh," "Of course,"
"Certainly," "Ugh," "Listen to him now!" There is a comedy side to all this which
relieves the tragedy and keeps the play from becoming disgusting. Glimpses of Ivan's past are given in his jerky
confessions he is the most miserable and unhappy of men, and you behold that he
is reaping as he has sown.
All
his life he has been preparing for this. Each day has been a preparation for the next. Ivan dies in a fit of wrath, hurling curses on
his family and court, dies in a fit of wrath into which he has been purposely
taunted by a man who knows that the outburst is certain to kill the weakened
monarch. Where does Ivan the Terrible go
when Death closes his eyes?
According
to scriptural fact, he now lies in death, the place of “sleep” for those who
have finished their life course. But
this I believe and know to be true, that in the case of Ivan and all others, no
confessional can absolve them, nor any priest can benefit them. He has damned himself, and he began the work
in youth. He was getting ready all his
life for this old age, and this old age was getting ready for the final scene
of his life.
The
playwright does not say so, Mansfield does not say so, but this is the lesson: Hate is a poison, wrath is a toxin, sensuality
leads to death clutching selfishness is a lighting of the fires of being cursed.
It is all a preparation cause and
effect.
We
often hear of the beauties of old age, but the only old age that is beautiful
is the one the man has long been preparing for by living a beautiful life. Every one of us, regardless of our current
age, are right now preparing for old age.
Sadly,
this is a reality that we often don’t realize until it is too late for us to
make any necessary changes. But we
should still try to do so. As part of
our temperament, we try to stall off to the last minute the things that we
should be working on constantly. We tend
to procrastinate on so many things within our lives. However, preparing for our later years should
not be one of them. The biggest problem
is we’re only human!
QUOTE TO CONSIDER
"If only youth had the wisdom,
and old age had the strength!"
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