The feeling that life has no purpose may be the hardest thing a person faces in old age.
I thought about this sentence for a long time and reflected on the people around me as I approach seventy-five. I found it to be one of the truest things I could say—and perhaps one of the most painful.
A person can endure many physical ailments, adapt to the loss of some abilities, and come to terms with the changing image they see in the mirror. But it is much harder to endure the feeling that nothing is expected of them anymore, that the days no longer hold a project waiting for them, a dream to pursue, a person who needs them, or new knowledge capable of awakening their curiosity.
The real danger in the passing years, in my view, is not simply that the body grows weaker, but that the drive to live grows weaker.
That the past becomes larger than the future.
And that, without realizing it, a person gradually moves from being someone who lives their life to someone who remembers it.
When we are young, we generally live facing forward. We want to learn, succeed, love, build a family, create a future, prove ourselves, and achieve dreams—some of which come true and others of which disappear.
Then the years pass, and a person accumulates a long history.
And this is where a hidden trap lies.
We may begin living around what has happened rather than thinking about what might happen.
We talk about the job we held, the successes we achieved, the battles we fought, the friends we knew, the places we visited, and the love we experienced.
There is nothing wrong with memories. Memory is part of our identity. It is the thread connecting our present to our past and allowing us to feel that we are the same person across time.
But tragedy begins when memory becomes the only source of meaning in life.
Memory itself is not guaranteed. It is a biological function that changes with age and may gradually decline without asking our permission. If a person has built their entire existence around what once was, what remains when parts of that past begin to retreat?
That is why I believe that, regardless of age, a person needs something to look forward to tomorrow.
A project that remains unfinished.
A book they have not yet read.
An idea they have not yet understood.
A place they have not yet visited.
Someone they want to make happy.
An opinion they are prepared to change if they discover new knowledge.
And a dream, however small, that has not yet come true.
I look at my friends and those around me, and I look at myself, and I arrive at a simple definition of life:
To live is to strive.
To feel.
To love.
To struggle.
To suffer sometimes.
To rejoice.
To participate.
To make mistakes and reconsider.
To learn something you did not know yesterday.
To have a morning when you wake up because there is something you want to do—not merely because you survived the night.
Biological existence alone is not the life I mean.
The heart may beat, the lungs may breathe, and a person may eat, sleep, and wake up, yet something essential may have withdrawn from within them if they have lost their curiosity, desire, and ability to participate.
I fear that this can become a form of death while we are still breathing and claiming to be alive.
“Why Are You Making Life Harder for Yourself?”
That is why I want to say something to children, grandchildren, and everyone who lives around an older person:
Be careful with the words you say out of good intentions.
“Why are you exhausting yourself?”
“You’ve worked enough. Just rest.”
“You shouldn’t be doing this at your age.”
“Don’t take risks.”
“Leave it to the younger generation.”
“You’ve done your part.”
These phrases may sound loving and protective, and sometimes they genuinely are. But they can sometimes carry another message that we do not intend:
Your role is over.
A person does not need someone in old age to remind them every morning that they have grown old. Their body does that efficiently enough!
What they need is someone who respects their ability to choose.
To decide when to work and when to rest.
To travel if they can.
To love.
To learn.
To use new technology.
To write, read, and debate.
To begin a project they do not know whether they will live long enough to see completed.
A person does not have to guarantee reaching the end of the road before they have the right to begin walking it.
I think we have misunderstood the concept of rest by turning it into the ultimate reward at the end of life.
We tell a person: You have worked hard enough. Now rest.
But what if working is what makes them happy?
What if their mind rests when it is thinking?
What if writing, teaching, research, farming, painting, music, or serving others is what gives them the feeling that they are alive?
Rest is a right, but it is not an existential purpose.
And sometimes excessive rest can be the beginning of extinguishing the light within us.
The body needs movement to preserve its ability to move. The mind needs challenge to remain engaged. And emotions need connection so they do not dry up.
Just as muscles need exercise, the will to live itself needs practice.
At the Threshold of Seventy-Five
As I stand on the threshold of seventy-five, I do not wish to become young again.
Every age has its beauty and its price, and there is no meaning in trying to recover a time that has already passed.
But I want something else.
I want to remain capable of wonder.
To listen to a twenty-year-old and discover that they know something I do not.
To read scientific research that overturns an idea I once firmly believed, and have the courage to say: I was wrong.
To engage with artificial intelligence, technology, modern medicine, and a changing society—not as things threatening my old world, but as windows onto a new world of which I am still a part.
Perhaps true old age does not begin when the hair turns gray or the muscles grow weaker.
It begins when a person says:
“I know enough.”
At that moment, they close the door to the future with their own hands.
Curiosity, in my view, is one of the deepest forms of youth.
I Want to Remain Capable of Love and Pain
It may sound strange for a person to wish to remain capable of pain.
But I do not mean illness or suffering for their own sake.
I mean not losing my sensitivity to life.
That the sadness of someone I love can still hurt me.
That injustice can still anger me.
That a grandchild’s laughter can still bring me joy.
That music can still move me.
That beauty can still stir me.
That the future of my country can still concern me.
That I remain capable of love, because the opposite of love is not always hatred.
Sometimes it is indifference.
And I fear indifference more than I fear pain.
The person who suffers is still connected to the world.
The person who loves still has something to lose.
The person who dreams still has a future.
Age Does Not Give Us the Right to Own Wisdom
One of the advantages of growing older is that we see larger stretches of time and accumulate an experience that cannot be condensed into books.
But this advantage carries its own danger.
Experience can become arrogance.
Wisdom can become paternalism.
Memory can become the belief that the past was always better.
That is why, as I grow older, I want to learn something that may seem contradictory:
To trust my experience, but not worship it.
To advise my children and grandchildren, while leaving them the right to disagree with me.
To tell them what I have learned without demanding that they live my life all over again.
They are children of a different era, just as I was a child of a different era from my father and grandfather.
Perhaps one of the most beautiful gifts of age is for a person to become a bridge between generations, rather than a guard at the gate of the past.
No one knows how many years they have left, and no one knows that at any age.
But I know how I want to live them.
I want to remain capable of love and pain.
To learn what is new.
To adapt to changes in science and knowledge.
To write, think, and debate.
To be present in my family’s life, not merely a photograph in its history.
And to continue, as long as I can, to make a difference in my country, even if that difference has become smaller than it was in earlier years.
For value is not always measured by the size of the impact, but by the continued desire to make one.
It is a positive will, but it is not merely a decision we make once.
It requires practice, training, and persistence.
We need to train our bodies to move, our minds to learn, our hearts to love, and our souls to hope.
And I think that every morning, regardless of our age, we should find an answer to one small question:
What is worth getting up for today?
The answer may be a major project.
It may be a page we write.
A book we read.
A grandchild we listen to.
A friend we check on.
An idea we reconsider.
Or a tree we plant knowing full well that we may never sit beneath its shade.
It does not matter.
What matters is that there is a tomorrow within us.
Life is not measured only by the number of years we have crossed, but by how much desire to keep moving forward remains within us.
And on the threshold of seventy-five, I do not ask life to give me back my youth.
I ask for something more beautiful:
That it leave me my curiosity.
My capacity to love.
My courage to change.
And my desire to make a difference.
For as long as there is something a person strives toward, someone they love, an idea they are still learning, and a cause worthy of taking a stand for, they have not yet become merely a memory.
Life is beautiful, and it deserves more than simply remaining in it…
It deserves to be lived, to be felt, all the way to the end.
