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The Measure of My Days
Playwright and Jungian analyst Florida Scott-Maxwell explores the unique predicament of one's later years: when one feels both cut off from the past and out of step with the present; when the body rebels at activity but the mind becomes more passionate than ever. Written when Maxwell was in her eighties, The Measure of My Days offers a panoramic vision of the issues that h...more
Paperback, 160 pages
Published
April 26th 1979
by Penguin Books
(first published 1968)
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Some wonderful writing in this notebook of thoughts:
"Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting, and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age. To my own surprise I burst out with hot conviction. Only a few years ago I enjoyed my tranquillity, now I am so disturbed by the outer world and by human quality in general that I want to put things right as thought I still owed a debt to life. I must calm down. I am far too frail to ind...more
"Age puzzles me. I thought it was a quiet time. My seventies were interesting, and fairly serene, but my eighties are passionate. I grow more intense as I age. To my own surprise I burst out with hot conviction. Only a few years ago I enjoyed my tranquillity, now I am so disturbed by the outer world and by human quality in general that I want to put things right as thought I still owed a debt to life. I must calm down. I am far too frail to ind...more
Everyone should read this book, if they intend to get old. It's revealing in its honest and surprising look at aging. The author admits that her version of aging doesn't represent all versions of aging, but I would submit, it's a good version to emulate. Almost every page, I found myself marking passages to remember. I'll be keeping this one on the shelf, to come back to time and again. I'll quote a few lines from the book. Remember that she was in her 80s, living in the 1970s, having been born...more
I'm strongly attracted to books on death and any time periods near this mysterious and mystical transition which we know happens, but know very little, if anything about what happens afterwards. If there were only a handful of books I could take with me on the last leg of this earthly journey, this would definitely be a candidate. This is an unflinching view of life from the vantage point of very old age and senility peeking into reality.
So many good quotes in here. Very interesting read, as she was concerned with existential questions dear to my own heart and drew many of the same conclusions, with a few striking differences that threw into relief the differences in our time/culture/personal experiences.
I was not familiar with the author, Florida Scott Maxwell, but this book, written a few decades ago when she was in her 80s, has been timeless. I bought a copy and I don't buy books very often except at book sales. If you are aging and looking for some wisdom, this book is a good one.
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“You have neat, tight expectation of what life out to give you, but you won't get it. That isn't what life does. Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. It is meant to, and it couldn't do it better. EVERY SEED DESTROYS ITS CONTAINER OR ELSE THERE WOULD BE NO FRUITION.”
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3 people liked it
“You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done … you are fierce with reality.”
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2 people liked it
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