Life is like a marathon. Like the competing marathoners, we all begin our race together at the starting line.

Soon, however, the runners slowly split apart and go their own paths, moving at their own rhythm. Some marathoners make like a short track runner, and run so breathlessly in the beginning that they soon lose their pace and drop out of the race.

Others keep running, following the solitary, winding roads that endlessly bend and curve. Sometimes, you might be cheered on and your supporters will kindly offer you a glass of water that quenches your thirst. Other times, the scorching heat, the foul dust on the road, or the seemingly never-ending race that makes you dead tired might discourage you from your path.

While running, you look around you and come to realize that you are all alone in this long distance race. All the others you knew are now either far away or gone. As you finally approach the finish line, you are overcome with exhaustion. At the end, you can either break triumphantly through the tape amidst the audience's applause, or silently disappear into oblivion. Either way, you become lonesome at the end of the race. That is an inevitable part of life.

Reminiscing on his own "long-distance race," the British poet Walter Savage Landor wrote a succinct yet powerful poem titled On His Seventy-fifth Birthday.

The poem reads: "I strove with none, for none was worth my strife / Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art / I warm'd both hands before the fire of life / It sinks, and I am ready to depart." Oh, how graceful it sounds! In fact, how many people can proudly declare, "I strove with none, for none was worth my strife"?

As a man who awaits his sixtieth birthday, I wish I could say the same thing. Alas! It is impossible for me, because I have already strove with so many people in my short span of life. The only consolation is that Landor was, in fact, an eccentric man who led a turbulent life; he was expelled from Rugby School and also suspended from Oxford due to insolence. In addition, he was sued for libel twice and once had to flee to Florence. Despite his gentle poem, it seems that he may have strove with everyone he encountered in his life.

Sometimes, we find a sage who may be able to truly transcend the gravity of mundane obsessions such as avarice and malignant resentment. The witty American columnist Art Buchwald was one who had the capacity of laughing and making others laugh, even at his deathbed by embracing and even mocking death. In a humorous essay he wrote just before he died, Buchwald said that he wanted to make sure that no celebrities such as Presidents or Nobel laureates died on the same day he planned to pass away.

Otherwise, he said, his obituary would be unjustly neglected. He also humored readers by saying that those who come to his funeral should leave their watches at the front desk so that they would not impatiently look at their watches during the ceremony. As a reward, he wrote, they would be given a tissue to wipe their tears. And he wrote his own obituary in advance for the New York Times: "Art Buchwald just died."

But it won't be easy to be like Buchwald. Recently, I participated in the annual American Studies International Seminar held at Mt. Songnisan. It was my 23rd time participating in the event, and I found myself among gray-haired senior professors. Sadly, I noticed that the occasion was an intellectual feast for younger professors and scholars. They were lively and garrulous, laughing heartily at all times.

"Professor Choi," said a young female scholar to another young male professor. "I've come all the way here to see you!" Sitting between them, I felt isolated. When younger, I, too, used to be surrounded by groups of admirers who would say, "Professor Kim, I've come all the way here to see you." On realizing that those days are now over, I felt lonely, and my heart ached.

Perhaps that is why our aged politicians still want to pull the strings behind the curtain or run for the presidency, not realizing that they are over-the-hill and obsolete, whom younger people no longer remember. Older people tend to develop strong nostalgia for the power and glory they once possessed when they were young.

However, there is no "fountain of youth," and you cannot go back in time. You should know when to retreat and retire. Otherwise, others may become jaded to you, and your reputation may be disgraced. Aging gracefully and elegantly is bliss. It is only natural that a long distance runner becomes lonely at the end of his race. What makes the runner a winner is the way he carries himself at the finish line.