I guess when your wife gives you a book for Xmas, you not only need to read it promptly but also carefully? This little book is about old age, not old old age where you are virtually dead but old age where you still have most of your declining faculties. Some, the forever young, respond to this wonderful period of life by attempting to deny it and remain young. Daniel Klein takes heart from Epicurus and claims that despite working on this book, he has docked at the harbour of old age at 73.

Tying our experiences together in a personal history is a way we can find meaning in our lives. (comment on Erikson p.76)

For me, this relaxed meditation on living well is timely in that I am now 72 and, according to the Hindu principles outlined by Klein, I am entering the sannyasi period characterised by renunciation following vanaprastha or the hermitic phase of forest dwelling (which is true). I’m seized with enthusiasm for renouncing all the useless stuff and have just spend the morning cleaning out one of my sheds. So useful to renounce so much junk that I’ve been hanging on to for years and take it to the tip or the op-shop. No wonder my wife gave me this book. How far renunciation will take me remains to be seen. It’s the last period before old old age where you might as well be dead so I’d better make the best of it..

Sannyasis are wondering hermits, living without shelter of possessions. They only eat when food is given to them. p. 141

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A great reflection on getting older from a philosophical point of view. ( )

I bought this book because recent reading has me suspecting that Epicurus has been rather maligned over the centuries and I wanted to learn more about what his philosophical school was really about. But I didn't want to find out via a dry, academic tome and I wanted to avoid anything that would hurt my brain (see: Heidegger's question, "Why are there things that are rather than nothing?"); I enjoyed Klein's Plato and Platypus Walk Into a Bar so this seemed a perfect fit.

Except that I didn't read the summary close enough. This is a book about Klein's reflections on old age and how he can live the most meaningful, authentic, old age he can. If I use my mom as a benchmark (and I will) then I'm still just slightly on the south side of middle-age, so I'm decidedly not this book's demographic. Also, there's very little about Epicurus here; he and his school of thought are mentioned in passing throughout, but Aristotle, Plato, Kierkegaard, Sartre and Heidegger get more specific play than poor Epicurus.

Still, I got a lot out of this book, even when I completely disagreed with him (and most modern philosophers, come to that). He discusses the paradox inherent in end of life choices, which even at my spring-chicken age I'm deeply interested in. He doesn't offer any answers and ultimately questions whether there are any answers to be had, and that really, for me, is the heart of philosophy.

A worthy read, but one that will be far more relevant (God willing) in a few more decades. Until then I'm still on the lookout for an engaging narrative about poor, misunderstood Epicurus. ( )

Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
—EPICURUS

The first thing you learn about Epicurus is that he wasn't a great gourmand.

Epicurus preferred a bowl of plain boiled lentils to a plate of roasted pheasant

He knew that if he ate mindfully he would experience all of their flavor, flavor that rivals spicy food. The key is mindfulness not the food.

While this book may be enjoyed by all I think that it will only truly be appreciated by the old, and maybe not by a large number of those who are fighting against oldness. For me I'll come back to this book often. I'm not that old, I learned something new about Epicurus today.


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I read this book about seven or eight years ago. I decided to skim through it again and I was able to finish the book within a few hours. It was an enjoyable read and one that was timely. I have just turned 68 and though I may not consider myself an old person, I am. So every now and then, I need some inspiration and guidance that this book and story provide.

The author was 72 when he wrote the book and he was struggling with how to conduct his life in old age. He travels to Greece carting along with a number of philosophy books and observing upon the Greek lifestyle ruminates on life. He focuses on the teachings and writings of the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus. The author draws upon the wisdom of Epicurus and other philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, William James, Aristotle and others, as well as his life’s experiences on handling the struggles of old age and the fear of death.

This is a book that I will keep and re-read a number of times as I grow older for inspiration and solace.

Listed below are some sections where I found personal wisdom and inspiration from the block…

“For starters, Epicureans had little interest in the political process. Indeed they believed that to enjoy a truly gratifying life one should withdraw completely from the public sphere; society would function remarkably well if everyone simply adopted a live-and-let-live policy, with each man seeking his own happiness. ”

“For me, it is Epicurus’s overall assessment of the qualities of a truly satisfying life that sheds the brightest sunshine on what a good old age might be. High on his list of the ways we thwart happiness is by binding ourselves to the constraints of the “commercial world.”

“One of my favorite of Epicurus’s aphorisms is: “Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.”

“Freed from “the prison of everyday affairs and politics,” an old man needs only to answer to himself. He does not need to stick to a strict schedule or compromise his whims to sustain his life. He can, for example, sit for hours on end in the company of his friends, occasionally pausing to sniff the fragrance of a sprig of wild lavender.”

“Companionship was at the top of Epicurus’s list of life’s pleasures. He wrote, “Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one’s entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.”

“Epicurus was not afraid of death. He famously said, “Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not. The absence of life is not evil; death is no more alarming than the nothingness before birth.”

“In every real man a child is hidden who wants to play.
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE”

“The forever young have a compelling reason for opting for ­hurried time: it is their primary strategy for combating time’s chronic tormentor—boredom. And next to illness and death, boredom is what we fear most in old age.”

“Yes, accumulated experience—that is precisely what an old person has available to him in abundance. The trick is to slow down enough that this accumulated experience can be contemplated and even, hopefully, savored.”

“To my surprise, I find the most relevant commentary on a marriage that continues into the sunset years comes from the radical German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who, in an atypically practical frame of mind, wrote, “When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.”

“Psychiatrists, of course, regularly weigh in with their estimates of the principal causes of this depression. Principal causes? I believe I could give these psychiatrists a helping hand on that question: it is because old old age stinks. It is horrible. The quality of life is usually zero. And if we still have any rational powers left at that point, we know that life is only going to get worse. ”

“But one compelling idea that I do take away from Stoic philosophy is the business about letting go of matters over which I have no control. Focusing on the horrors of old old age before I get there would get me nowhere. For starters, it would be a waste of precious and very limited time.”
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