Discovering the means for ageing successfully even when we have little is a process that involves learning, restraint and resolve. During youth, we seek experiences. Implicit with this desire is perhaps the knowledge that everything ends. Hence, we accumulate and such a disposition never leaves us. As time passes, we learn to rely on the process as well as the gains of accumulation.
During our travels, we stop to admire the view and collect memories, and we try and forget that someday even our body will leave us. The elements and the momentum of such gatherings likely don’t end till we are forced to recognize that the end is near. If we can practice recalling that everything is temporary, and that nothing lastingly satisfies, we are served well and ageing with ease becomes possible. Ageing successfully even when we have little isn’t about depriving ourselves. It is realizing that if we can learn to depend on the fewest possible things, we can be free. And nothing is more important than being free, because even our body is entrapment. A fact we get to realize as we age, when the body starts to fail us.
Having little isn’t failure, it is actually a blessing. Seeing this clearly is the primary means to ageing successfully. When we seek to acquire and use only what we need, we minimize the setback of cessation. And if this is done in the service of being free, even cessation becomes liberating. Depending on little is more valuable than acquiring abilities or possessions, because these can be lost. The capacity to be fulfilled without much, if cultivated, never fails us. And with ageing, everything actually does.
When we don’t have much, we learn to be innovative and more efficient. There is joy in the exercise of simplicity of this nature and we start to discover plenty even when there is little.