The trick is to get old without becoming jaded.
My valued colleague H. N. couldn't pull it off. He had a certain depth and a certain wisdom, and we were on good terms. He knew how to take my intensity and he wasn't threatened by my intelligence: his was a healthy self-confidence. But he had become lazy and complacent among unstimulating colleagues. I couldn't engage him. An idea of mine might be dismissed with "That's already in Spinoza." Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't. "But what do you think of the idea?" No answer. Didn't care. Tired, jaded.
He was dead wood on the path to petrification. Jaded, he was turning to stone.
What I didn't say to him out of affection and because it would have done no good: What are you doing here? You have the wherewithal to retire. Why do you continue to draw a salary?
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