Butler Ellis Parker
How It Feels to Be Fifty

We know that Homer and Socrates were aged men because certain famous portrait busts have advertised it. But how many know whether Cicero, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, or Pythagoras did their best work before or after fifty? We don't know and we don't care.

Take Noah, for example. At fifty Noah was a comparatively unknown citizen, with a neighborhood reputation for homely virtues, and a nice growing family; but he had cut no very great figure in the world. Some of the younger fellows thought of him now and then as a sort of aged gentleman who was about ready to drop into the grave. Probably they thought it was quite a feather in Noah's cap when one of them stopped him and asked him to write a short paper on the subject, "How it Feels to be Fifty."

"There is a chance for you to produce a wonder," the young fellow said to Noah. "Make the essay just as personal and real and funny as you possibly can. Age is one of the most interesting subjects in the world. Everybody either looks forward to being fifty or back to having been fifty. There is no subject about which human beings think more."

"All right," Noah said. "I 'll do it; but you must expect to be disappointed, because I don't feel old, or aged, or anything of that sort. I feel young and lively, as if I were just beginning to live – "

"Slush!" said the young fellow. "You 're old. At fifty you have one foot in the grave. That stands to reason. Now be a nice old fellow and write something that will please the Neighborhood Society. Something about standing on the apex of the hill of life, looking down the farther side, and that sort of thing." So Noah did. He aimed to please. He wrote the essay and said he was now fifty and had but a few years to live, and that he did hate to think of so soon having to part from one and all. The paper made a great hit. It was loudly applauded.

And fifty years after that, Noah was still alive.

And fifty years after that, Noah was still alive.

And then another fifty years passed, and Noah was still alive.

And then a hundred years passed, and Noah was still alive.

And two hundred years after that, Noah was still alive and going strong.

And it was n't until one hundred years after that, that Noah made the big hit of his life by gathering his folks and his live stock into the ark. He was six hundred years two months and seventeen days old when the big rain began that was to make him famous. You can read that in Genesis, 7th chapter, 11th verse. That was just five hundred and fifty years two months and seventeen days after the young fellow asked Noah to write how it felt to be an old man of fifty starting on the downward path.

I think we should all take Noah as a model, and keep a young heart and an eager, forward-looking spirit until we are at least six hundred years two months and seventeen days old. Our forty days of glory and greatness and good service may come long after we are fifty – five hundred and fifty years after, for all we know.

I like Noah. He had no surrender in him. Old at fifty? He considered himself a mere baby at fifty! At six hundred he was just getting into his proper stride. He was just ripe to tackle a big job like the flood.

Chapter 9, verse 28: And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.

Verse 29: And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years; and he died.

It was about time he died. Nine hundred and fifty years ought to satisfy any man. In my family, barring accidents and diseases, we live to be ninety or ninety-six, and I ask you, frankly, how you can expect me to fret and worry and be agedly philosophical when I am still only a young tart of fifty. It is too much to ask of me.