October 21: No Fault to Find With Old Age (Vol. 9, pp. 45-56)

Cicero's "On Old Age" is today's reading, as he quotes Cato as saying old age is something "to which all wish we attain, and at which all grumble when attained."

Cato lists four reasons why we grumble. "First, that it withdraws us from active employments; second, that it enfeebles the mind; third, that it deprives us of nearly all physical pleasures; fourth, that it is the next step to death."

Of course, Cato was 84 when he wrote that -- an extraordinary age for the time. But he doesn't want to go back to being young, for old age is a time when a person "is even more confident and courageous than youth."

Age is what you make of it, and Cicero was definitely a believer in the aphorism that attitude is everything.