There is always another move to be made in the game of life

A famous painting that hung for many years in the Louvre Museum until it was sold into private hands depicts a chess game between Faust and the Devil. The game has apparently concluded. Faust is shown slumped over the board with an expression of defeat. Satan is smiling. The painting’s title is “Checkmate.”

One day a chess enthusiast stood for what seemed an interminable period when suddenly he became overcome with emotion and cried out, “Don’t despair! Don’t give up! You still have one more.”

Those of us who are elders may wonder if there are any moves we can make to turn our attention away from our society’s celebration of being young. An old joke asks: What are the three stages of life? Youth, middle age and “You Look Wonderful.” We are bombarded with commercials promising to help us look wonderfully young. No more drooping skin. No lack of energy.

In the meantime life expectancy keeps going up. Hallmark sold 85,000 greeting cards celebrating a 100th birthday. Octogenarians are the fastest growing cohort in America, even as many worry about the “hereafter” – walking into a room and wondering “what am I here after?”

What does it mean to be old? Can we grow older with purpose and optimism? Few can be like Picasso, who was still painting in his 90s, or Verdi, who composed in his 80s. For most of us, worldly successes and their rewards are memories of the past. All of us inevitably decline and cope with the fear of becoming irrelevant.

The challenge is how to reimagine what success can mean. The answer is to focus less on ourselves and more on what we are able to give to others. It often means reframing our life story. Would we want it to be said at our funeral how wealthy we were, how much status we enjoyed, how much power we possessed? Wouldn’t we want it to be said that we nurtured the next generation, that we used the deepened wisdom accumulated in a lifetime of experience to make our corner of the world improved?

I bet Emerson was not a young man when he reflected on what it means to be successful: “To find the best in others, ... to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived.” When we are older it should be less important to achieve what commentator David Brooks calls resumé values. It is a time to focus on eulogy values, qualities that are ethical and spiritual. In Anne Lamott’s words, “to age away from brains and ambition towards heart and soul.”

There are still great dividends for us to savor and enjoy. Arthur Brooks reminds us that when we become open to caring for and commitment to the welfare of other lives, when we can try to nurture the relationships we have with friends and family, then we’re on the way to happiness, no matter our age.

That man who stood transfixed before the painting of a chess game suddenly realized the match had not been concluded. If Faust would execute one more move, he would win.

We who are elders have also not used up all our moves. If we perform one more selfless act of caring then we will move towards victory in the game of life.

Leslie Y. Gutterman is rabbi emeritus of Temple Beth-El in Providence.