Chapter - 5

Overcoming Fears Concerning The Second Half Of Life

Fear will make you old before your time . . . never stop growing and you'll never grow old . . . maturity without fear is a wonderful time to be alive . . . thoughts that will keep you feeling and acting young as long as you live.

Story From Life:

The Woman Who Looked Back

I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or a woman,
Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else, WALT WHITMAN

The trouble with old age is that it has had too much adverse publicity. Hearing that old age is unpopular people get afraid of it, dye their hair and fudge about the number of their birthdays. Yet the second half of life can be filled with a beauty and happiness that youth can never know. One thing is certain: fears about old age can make you old before your time.

For example, let me tell you about the woman who looked back.

This woman, whom we can call Mrs. Nolan, had been left a widow when her only child, a son, was three years old. She had worked as a clerk in a store to support him and herself and had given him a good education. After she had reached the age of fifty-five her employers began to find fault with her work and eventually discharged her. Mrs. Nolan became very much embittered. "It is the way they get rid of older people," she said. This had happened to other olding men and women at that store. Some of the employees had been there for many years.

Her son took care of her for a few years while she worked "now and then" but her son, who had been in love with a fine girl for several years, got married. Everyone was happy about Bill's marriage to Nancy except Bill's mother. Nancy's mother refused aid from the young couple. "I've had my chance in life," she said. "You've enough to do to establish a home and give me some grandchildren."

Bill and Nancy had helped Mrs. Nolan, who still lacked six years of being old enough to go on old-age relief (California state pension). She had expected them to continue helping her. But things had reached a crisis. Nancy was now expecting a baby and had to give up her job. Their before-marriage agreement was they were to have children and that Nancy would never go out to work again, once they had a child. Bill, having been brought up as an only child without a father "wanted to have several children."

These problems, threats to her future, so greatly worried Mrs. Nolan that she became melancholy, withdrawn and would hardly leave the house. Her son came to me on her behalf.

"Part of it is a bid for sympathy, to justify herself, to shame Nancy and her mother," Bill said unhappily. "But she's my mother and I love her and I want to do everything I can for her. Most of all, I want her to be well and happy. We gave her two of your books but she hasn't read them. However, she is willing to see you."

Mrs. Nolan lived in a small beach town. I arrived at her home about ten o'clock one heavenly morning. The sky was so blue, the sun so bright, the Pacific Ocean breeze so delightful that I had to argue with myself to park my car and go to her door instead of heading toward the beach. Bill had continued to keep up the yard, and recently had painted the little house for his mother. All this made such a good impression that I was doubly shocked when Mrs. Nolan came to the door. She wore a soiled bathrobe, with one pocket hanging by one seam, hem half out, dragging. Her uncombed hair had not been shampooed for several weeks and her pale face was a mass of self-pity.

"Come in" she said, in a tone that implied that one more trouble couldn't matter much. No smile. No warmth.

Having spent considerable time in prayer, thought and meditation on the case before going, and as always, sincerely praying, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord," I was not prepared for the words that did come out of my mouth. For I said:

"Self-pity will get you nowhere with me. Unless you are willing to cooperate and try to help yourself, I am not going to waste time with you. I can see only a limited number of people in person. In order to come down here today, I had to put aside the book I am working on. Your son is a fine young man. I felt certain that any woman who could do what you've done to bring him up would be worthy of all the help I could possibly give and more. I thought you were a going concern. Your son praised you highly. But I see you don't really want help. You only want pity."

Mrs. Nolan had stood silent while I scolded, her eyes downcast. Suddenly she began to weep. I felt like the lowest barnacle on the lowest bottom of the lowest ship.

"I do want help," she said presently. "I need help so badly I am scared." Then she told me what had happened that made her willing to see me.

Recently her son had brought her an apple pie in a beautiful plate. "Nancy baked it for you, mother," he had said happily and proudly. "Nancy is a wonderful cook. She bakes the best apple pie I ever ate. You'll say so too, when you taste it."

"That," said Mrs. Nolan, "was piling insult on injury. I used to bake the best pies in the world. Now, it is Nancy! Well, after Bill had gone I kept on thinking about everything and I was so mad I just picked up that pie, plate and all and slammed it down on the floor. Broke the plate, splashed pie all over the place. But I felt better. Got some of the anger out of me. But I felt ashamed too and afraid and realized I needed help."

It is my experience in working with people with problems that the one needing help has to want it and be very willing to ask for it. Otherwise, help poured on can become trespass and usurping of free will. No good can come from that. Mrs. Nolan convinced me she was serious about wanting to be helped. So we started to work.

Our first job was to get Mrs. Nolan to see that she was suffering from a three-phase fear, because all three of her basic desires for life, love and freedom were threatened.

No job, no financial help brought a whole flock of fears; not enough money, loss of prestige, damage to health, no money for doctors or food. This was also a threat to liberty. Bill had moved twenty miles away, and she no longer had a car. She felt things were closing in on her. Moreover, old age appeared to be a threat of helplessness, being unwanted, unloved and she feared she already had lost face with her son, status with the others.

Mrs. Nolan had been eating from the tree of death, that old, old false belief that evil can overcome good.
"Your basic problem," I said, "is that you have been trying to hold things still. You have been looking back at life and trying to hold everything just as it was at its highest best for you. Never can it be. Life forever marches on and we must move along with it or be run over, or shunted aside in the shallows of life where existence is dull, painful and ungainful. So stop looking back, my dear, start to look forward."

That, she was willing to try to do. Our next step was to look at her religious beliefs. We found she believed God did not love her. This belief had begun when her husband was ill and died so young. God had not helped him or her then. She never had trusted God since. Her anger at God and others was, of course, anger with herself for not being able to handle life. Anger ever is a defense against fear.

The healing of fear for Mrs. Nolan began with her new concept of God as all love, all wisdom and all power and an understanding of the spiritual laws which execute themselves. Her second step away from fear was to realize she did not have to try to break her fear habits, but instead to walk away from them by setting up new habits in the opposite direction. To do that she would have to set a goal for her life from there on. She would then have to use her creative power to think of what she did want, about how to fulfill her three basic desires for more of life, love and liberty instead of dwelling on what she did not want and feared would happen. She had to leave the past and walk toward a good future.

It took quite awhile to get Mrs. Nolan to see that she could attain such a goal. "But if you quit, give up, and drag along in life until you are of legal age to go on relief, you would only deepen your fears, resentments, shorten your life, damage your health and curtail your freedom,"

I told her. "Besides, the moment you received an old-age pension you'd lose status with yourself. It would mark you, in your own mind, as a less person. Nancy's mother is determined not to ask for help. You will hate and resent her all the more if you accept it."

Point by point Mrs. Nolan saw the truth that would eventually make her free from all her fears, and so, open a new life to her.

"All you can take with you when you go from earth is what you have become," I reminded her. "Don't just spend these autumn years of your earth life. Invest them in learning the spiritual laws, in learning how to use the power of your word, and overcome fear once and forever. You are too intelligent, too capable and too honest and you've been too good a worker just to sit down and quit and be entertained for the rest of your life. You would be sick of yourself."

Finally Mrs. Nolan said, "I already am sick of myself." She added, smiling, "You know what, I like you! You had the courage to scold me. Brought me to my senses." By that time it was noon and she wanted to offer me lunch but the kitchen sink was piled with dirty dishes and she wasn't sure there was any coffee in the house. Everything in the kitchen needed cleaning from floor to curtains to ceiling.

That first visit I asked Mrs. Nolan to start to walk toward her goal of becoming self-respecting as a means of overcoming her fears. Some of the changes she was to make at once were:

1. Polish all her shoes, put in new shoelaces to replace the knotted and broken ones.

2. Have her hair done.

3. Be out of her bathrobe and slippers before eight, mornings. For many years she had been at work by eight, away down in Los Angeles.

4. Repair, clean, wash her clothing.

5. Clean the house, curtains, and refrigerator; make all else as neat and attractive as possible.

"I don't see what all this has to do with my future," she objected, for her habits were deep.

"It is your present," I explained, "and out of it will grow your future. Your need is to order and control your future by what you do in the present. Your fears will drop in proportion as your self-respect and esteem go up. Emotions can take you forward or backward. Your surroundings greatly influence how you feel. Your need is to feel creative and happy with plans for immediate action."

"All right," she said in a spirit of cooperation. "I guess I'll get a new corset while I'm about it."

"Good," I approved. "And a new dress, too. You have to go through the motions of having self-respect and of being a going concern. A woman with a new corset and a new, becoming dress does not sit at home and mope. She puts them on and goes out to let people see how attractive she can be. Everyone enjoys seeing a well dressed, well groomed woman. Make some social plans too. Let it be a treat to people to meet you."

Was it just whistling in the dark? No! It was working with the laws of life, love and liberty.
Mrs. Nolan was already on the way to overcoming her fears before I left that first day. For at the door she said to me, waving back at the house, "This will all be changed."

On my second visit I found it was changed—so clean, so sparkling that I went from room to room complimenting her on all she had done. When she put on her new corset and new blue dress I admired the good effect. People who entertain fears need a great deal of praise and admiration. I had gone to suggest her first step in financial independence for a flood of ideas had come to me for her. I had sifted them down to what seemed the best one. We went into it at once.

The idea was for Mrs. Nolan to work in the home of someone who needed her, where she would receive a salary, room and board and be able to rent out her own little house. This would make her independent of receiving financial help from her son. Earning would further still her fears and she would be with people and not alone, and could practice the art and science of love, which once perfected casts out all fear.

In setting up a goal for her financial independence, we began with the law, "Use what you have to get more of anything you want." And: start where you are. When I had asked Mrs. Nolan to write down a list of her assets she had said she had nothing but her little home which was free and clear of debt. The list I made up of her assets included: Time, which if put to work earns money.

Experience in selling. Experience in love. She could read and write, walk, talk, stand, see and hear. She could cook, keep house and drive a car. And while she showed me her new clothes I discovered another asset: she had a good sense of style and colors. In a corner of her bedroom was a thick stack of magazines about better homes and building. She had made some inexpensive, very pretty curtains for her bedroom.

Before I left that day Mrs. Nolan had agreed to run an ad in the paper and offer to take care of an older person and live in their home. My long-range objective was for her to save all the money possible, to start to buy a residence income lot toward the day when she could build income property and so achieve her final financial freedom. To help her concentrate on the good she desired and to take her mind completely away from things and conditions she feared, I had taken her a little gift. It was a small ivory statuette of the three famous monkeys who, in turn, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

"Nora Nolan," I said, "I want you to learn to be a good monkey," and we laughed about it gaily. It proved to be a good technique for her.
Her ad brought results. She accepted the job of looking after an eighty-five-year-old lady. "Helps me to remember my own blessings," said Mrs. Nolan. She liked the place from the first and they liked her. Because she had a goal she wanted to reach Mrs. Nolan "went all out," to give satisfaction to her employer. "Standing behind a sales counter trying to please the public for years helps me out now," she told me. Soon the daughter of the elderly lady bought a little used car for Mrs. Nolan's use. She started going to church again, making new friends and on her days off she went "realestating," looking at lots and income properties for ideas for her future project. She also had some time to read, study and attend an occasional lecture.

When a threat surfaced Mrs. Nolan commanded herself to "Be a good monkey, Nora." She was actively working at her determination to overcome anything that looked like evil with good.

By the time Mrs. Nolan's second grandchild had been born her affairs had progressed to the place where she was ready to build her income property. She had done no baby sitting. She had been too busy living a happy and constructive life of her own. They all visited and were friendly, but Mrs. Nolan never had idle time on her hands. When she was ready to start her project she had a relapse into fear. What if it didn't pay off? She was going to risk her all, to sell her home and finance her now clear income lot for the building.

"Of course it will pay off," I told her. "People will not stop having babies. People will not stop coming to southern California. People like you will continue to want to live in smaller quarters as they grow older. Build for them the kind of place you'd want for yourself. Make your apartments beautiful, colorful, functional for the kind of tenants you mean to attract."

Mrs. Nolan "had a session" with herself about her fears, decided to go on "being a good monkey" and to proceed with her building project. I sent a business adviser to her, and recommended a good architect and contractor. Her project was declared to be sound and she went ahead.

Today Mrs. Nolan looks younger than her years. Nearly every one of her tenants as they come and go have in turn been helped by that energetic, and happy woman. She has a lot to say to them about spiritual laws, overcoming fear and never growing older and about "being a good monkey."

Mrs. Nolan often points out to her tenants that "being fired from that miserable little job that looked so big to me at the time was an act of God in disguise. I shudder," she tells them, "when I think how different my life would have been if I had stayed on that job." To me, she often said, "I shudder when I think what would have happened to me if I had not overcome all my bitterness."

Here are some ideas that will help the person looking forward to tomorrow:

1. The person in love never feels old.

The older we grow the more we need to give and to receive love. Keep your love light burning—stay in love.

2. Make yourself necessary and welcome to others.

Tell yourself: "God and my neighbor have need of me. And I am loved and secure and free." Then work at it.

3. Never ask for pity.

Pity is destructive and deepens fear. Seek to be worthy of admiration. To be admired is to be encouraged.

4. Don't worry about the future of the younger generation.

Tomorrow's world will be better than it is today. We are ungrateful and uncooperative guests of God if we doubt tomorrow.

5. Love will do more for you than money.

Money alone cannot give you a sense of security and help in your old age. It takes love put to work to do that. If this were not true there would not be a hospital or any other charity organization in existence. I have known older people who had plenty of money but no love to give and so received no love and who fared badly at the hands of paid helpers. But love will see you through. The person who is sweet, cheerful, loving, grateful, interested in others will never lack for tender, loving care.

6. Serenity keeps you young.

Even old faces are beautiful if they are serene. For serenity expresses God. Serenity is a result of being free from all fear, and so from all tension, hate, resentments, feelings of injustice and inferiority. Get rid of hurry, worry, fuss and fret. These make you old. Serenity comes from good desires and desires fulfilled, and cannot come merely from quitting, from resignation. Serenity is constructive, happy. Being resigned is destructive because it is giving in to fear.

7. Keep on loving life as well as people and yourself.

A retired school teacher, greatly loved by all who knew her and cared for tenderly in her old age, once wrote me, "I am still kicking and ticking," when she was ninety-five. Her letters were always filled with a zest for living with news of others and comments on the world and life.

8. Develop new skills and meet new people.

Dr. James A. Peterson, associate professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, said that the factor of age is only incidental to the problems encountered at retirement. He said it depended upon the individual's attitude and that everything can come to a seeming end, even at forty. He advises enlargement of human contacts and ways to be useful. I agree with Dr. Peterson. And, I would add, the TV chair and a desire to be merely entertained is deplorable because destructive. We are born doers. To sit down on the side lines of life is to increase fear and discontent. Be a doer.

9. Never stop growing and you'll never grow old.

Louis Kuplan of the International Association of Gerontology said that good health in an older person has a very definite relationship with learning. So never stop developing your mind.

10. Be a good listener.

The ministry of listening is fitted to old age. Everyone needs to be heard. Especially the young.

11. Eat of the fruit of the tree of life and stay forever young.

The fruit of the tree of life is high faith—three-phrase faith in God, neighbor and self. Always expect the best. If an unpleasant or threatening situation arises, use the power of your word to declare boldly "only good can come out of this!"

12. Feed your spirit daily.

Read your Bible. Read the Christian message in the New Testament. Read the great promises and meditate upon the truth in the Psalms. They will bring you peace and a renewed faith in God's love, wisdom, and power. Memorize the 23d Psalm and repeat it whenever you feel disturbed or alone, or fearful.

13. Don't regret old age, call it good and enjoy it.
Look at life as a total picture. Old age will then take its good and rightful place. In early life so much of our time, energy and attention must be given to the physical body. But it reaches a limit of growth and stops there. We need to take good care of our body because it is the house in which we live while on earth. It is our means of transportation and learning. We need to keep it holy for it is the "temple of the living God," and is God's channel for passing on the spark of life. But as we grow older the body does not need to be further built, only maintained in perfection. This leaves more of our time, thought and energy to develop our mind and spirit.

14. The mind and spirit should improve with age.

This is why the second half of life can be so satisfying, with a wonderful sense of growing, on-going, of freedom and new power. Of course, the best time to prepare for a happy, carefree, fear-free old age, is in our youth. For if we have learned the lessons of love early in life, we approach old age with only the one big job to do to learn more and more and more before we leave this earth plane to enter a new school for further Soul development.

Growing older? Well, what of it? Age and change are part of the process of life. It is good. So fear no evil!

We have seen steps six and seven in overcoming fear, at work in this chapter. Now, we must name them and look at them more closely.

Step six is: When a fear arises face the worst that could happen.

Step seven is: After facing the worst that could happen, be willing for it to be so, for it to happen.

This is what Mrs. Nolan did. There is much more to these two steps than could be included here. After we cover the next two steps in Chapters 6 and 7, we shall go back and go into these two fully. Because steps six and seven are actually a part of eight and nine as we shall see.

But now, we must get on to chapter six. I think it may well be the most important chapter in the whole book. It will certainly be the most difficult piece of writing I ever have done in my whole life. I planned to take it out of the manuscript again and again, only to feel that I must put it back. Every writer owes the best he knows to his readers. And this, regardless of any personal pain or cost.

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