how to grow old

HOW TO GROW OLD By Bertrand Russell

论老之将至

——伯兰特·罗素

1. In spite of the title, this article will really be on how not to grow old, which, at my time of life, is a much more important subject. My first advice would be to choose your ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off。

1.尽管标题如此，但是这篇文章实际上所围绕的主题是如何防止衰老，这是一个在我生命中非常重要的主题。我的第一个忠告是认真仔细地去考察自己的族谱。尽管我的双亲都在很早的时候去世了，但是我还是在这个方面作了关于其他先辈的研究。我的外祖父在67岁去世，应该说正值年华，但是我的外祖母和祖父母都活过了80岁。在别的祖先当中，我只发现有一位祖先活的不是很长久，他死于一种现在很罕见的“疾病”——砍头。

2. A great grandmother of mine, who was a friend of Gibbon, lived to the

age of ninety-two, and to her last day remained a terror to all her descendants. My maternal grandmother, after having nine children who survived, one who died in infancy, and many miscarriages, as soon as she became a widow, devoted herself to woman’s higher education. She was one of the founders of Girton College, and worked hard at opening the medical profession to women. She used to relate how she met in Italy an elderly gentleman who was looking very sad. She inquired the cause of his melancholy and he said that he had just parted from his two grandchildren. “Good gracious”, she exclaimed, “I have seventy-two grandchildren, and if I were sad each time I parted from one of them, I should have a dismal existence!” “Madres naturale,” he replied. But speaking as one of the seventy-two, I prefer her recipe. After the age of eighty she found she had some difficulty in getting to sleep, so she habitually spent the hours from midnight to 3 a.m. in reading popular science. I do not believe that she ever had time to notice that she was growing old. This, I think, is proper recipe for remaining young. If you have wide and keen interests and activities in which you can still be effective, you will have no reason to think about the merely statistical fact of the number of years you have already lived, still less of the probable brevity of you future.

我的曾祖母曾经是吉本的朋友，她活到了92岁，她的后代一直到她断气的那天都对她很畏惧。我的外祖母，一辈子生了十个孩子，其中

一个不幸在幼年夭折，九个存活下来了。除此之外，她还经历过多次流产，可是等到她成为寡妇之后，她马上致力于妇女的高等教育事业上。她是格顿女子学院的创建者之一，为使医务界接纳妇女而不断努力。她常常跟我们说她曾经在意大利遇到了一位年老的绅士，当时，他看起来很伤心。当她询问使他伤心的原因的时候，他说他刚刚失去他的两个孙子。“好家伙，”她大叫道，“我有72个孙子孙女，要是每失去一个我都伤心欲绝的话，那我的生活会是多么凄惨！”“您真是一位与众不同的母亲，”他这样回答道。但是我作为她72为孙子孙女中的一员，我很赞同她的见地。在她80岁以后她发现她有些睡眠问题，于是她习惯于在午夜到凌晨三点这段时间阅读大众科学。我不相信她会有时间来注意她正在慢慢变老。这在我看来是保持年轻的最佳秘方。如果你有广泛和强烈的兴趣并且参加到那些你认为实际的活动当中去，你就没有理由去考虑你已经活了多少年，更不可能会觉得你的未来很渺茫。

3. As regards health I have nothing useful to say since I have little experience of illness. I eat and drink whatever I like, and sleep when I cannot keep awake. I never do anything whatever on the ground that it is good for health, though in actual fact the things I like doing are mostly wholesome.

3.关于健康，我没有有用的建议，因为我很少生病。我吃任何我喜欢的事物，在我无法保持自己清醒的时候就去睡觉。我从来不做一些被认为是对健康有益的事情，虽然事实上，我喜欢做的大部分事情是有

益于健康的。

4. Psychologically there are two dangers to be guarded against in old age. One of these is undue absorption in the past. It does not do to live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about friends who are dead. One’s thoughts must be directed to the future and to things about which there is something to be done. This is not always easy: one’s own past is gradually increasing weight. It is easy to think to oneself that one’s emotions used to be more vivid than they are, and one’s mind keener. If this is true it should be forgotten, and if it is forgotten it will probably not be true.

4.在心理方面老年人有两个方面危险因素需要注意提防，其中之一是过度专注于过去，这并不是意味着活在过去的记忆里，而是沉浸在追悔过去的时光，或者对已经逝去的朋友感到悲哀之中。人类的思想必须为未来和你所肩负的责任去打算。这并非易事——一个人的过去总是在生活中慢慢增加重量。人们总是认为自己过去的感情要比现在的强烈得多，头脑也比现在的灵活。但是如果果真如此的话，那就应该忘了它，当你彻底忘了那些的时候，情形很有可能会是两样。