His power to do so has been limited by his own ignorance. Once men said that there could never be a steam-engine. Later they scoffed at the possibility of building a flying machine. In his discovery of new laws, man is learning that he has hindered his own growth through his lack of understanding. A man can never grow old. He may stop growing, and stagnate. That is what I had done.
The first lesson that I had to learn was the difference between youth and old age. Both are really matters of the spirit, rather than of years. One may be aged at twenty, and a youth at eighty.
The spirit of youth has courage, is venturesome, progressive, optimistic, creative. The spirit of old age is afraid, reactionary, pessimistic, and stagnant. Youth laughs. Old age sighs. Youth is eager to discover new paths. Old age wants to stay in the prison of habit and travel the same old ruts.
I had been traveling in ruts. And I had worn them deep. For twenty years I had let myself live in the same old dark apartment, and take the same old route to the same old printing-plant. And I had wanted to cling to the same old ways of doing work. The time came when I realized that I must have been something of a proposition to the printing-plant’s young management. For I had stubbornly opposed the new efficiency system.
Because I felt tired at night, I had let my wife give up all other associations to keep me company. I had let myself lose interest in my old friends, and I had shunned making new ones. I selfishly clung to just my own immediate family. That meant heart-stagnation. The man is old who has let himself lose his heart-interest in people.
The man who loves most, lives most. Youth loves.
I had let myself drop out of touch with all the big public issues. I felt no interest in any country but the United States, and that meant very little to me outside of New York City. And here in New York, where every opportunity offered, I never went to a lecture, or to a concert. I had stopped going to see the new plays; I talked about the superior old days of the theatre, when Daly’s was in its prime. I didn’t even read the new books, but prided myself on sticking to the old ones. All of which made for brain-stagnation.
I had grown afraid of adventure.
This revelation came to me suddenly, the next day after my first experience with the Voice. It sent a tingle of protest through me, and I cringed with something like shame. But I halted on the sidewalk and faced the fact squarely. Then I rebelliously pulled myself together, quit my hunt for a job, forgot my poverty-stricken bank-account, and went for a trip through Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum. I had not been there for years. It all seemed like a new world to me. It stirred my stagnant emotions and filled me with new interests.
We are continually losing these life-building values that lie right at our elbow. A man will travel the same old route day after day to his business. If, once in a while, he would go even a block out of his way, he might have the feeling of new adventure-get a new view, or some experience to stimulate new cell-activity in his stagnating heart and brain.