Beautiful advice from Bertrand Russell on aging gracefully. Interesting the way it treats expansive interests as a sort of ego death, gradually recognizing that the end of the self is at most the briefest of flickers in the flame of existence.

The best way to overcome [an unhealthy fear of dying] — so at least it seems to me — is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

Bertrand Russell’s “How to Grow Old”, from Portraits From Memory And Other Essays