This is aimed mainly at the elderly among my readership.
Who are the old? It is approximately the last quarter of life when a Man is 'old'. Since the natural human lifespan is about 70 years, then the last quarter commences at about age 53.
So, if you are that age or older you just-are Old, and ought to acknowledge the fact because there is work to be done!
What kind of work? If he is wise - a Man's thoughts will (and should) begin to turn towards death. Death is the work.
The nature of 'work' in old age is provided-for by our natural disposition, and by the waning of other concerns and capacities. Modern people see old age in terms of loss of abilities (and appearance).
This is because biological ageing does not generate any genuine 'compensatory' increase in other abilities - so the phenomenon seems wholly negative.
So much for biology... It is when we include the spiritual as our focus that we can see 'compensatory phenomena'.
What old age brings is not capabilities but possibilities. There is a spontaneous tendency for a change in patterns of activity, sleep, and interests that are suited to the tasks of old age.
These tasks are, broadly, a coming to terms with mortal (finite) human life, and the implications for the nature and meaning of death.
This is why older people are spontaneously interested by the past - especially their own past, and by those who are dead. These natural changes provide clues to the spiritual task of the old.
I get the impression that very few of today's old people are engaged in these proper and necessary tasks; essentially because they have decided that death will be an end for them and everyone, an annihilation.
(Probably this is why modern old people are (in general) such a vain, foolish, and selfish bunch of parasites - as revealed so graphically by their terrified, hysterical and resentful response to the birdemic fraud.)
But if we instead assume that death is a transformation, we can begin to work on the nature and implications of that transformation...
The implications for our-selves, for those who have already died (the 'so-called dead', as Rudolf Steiner called them), and for those who love who will (at some point) face that transformation.
That is (or should be) the primary work of the elderly. And, unlike many activities, it is something that the old are naturally equipped and inclined to do.
Of course, this work cannot and should not be the whole of life; any more than going-to-school, playing, finding-a-spouse, raising kids, or making-a-living, or any other single activity can be the whole of life in earlier years.
But it is something we ought to be doing in old age - and if we aren't doing it, then we will almost certainly experience old age as a net-negative phenomenon, a life-phase of overall-loss - and respond with an escalatingly desperate and delusional clinging to the activities and appearances of youth.
