【正确答案】At the age of seventy, I may well say that I have experienced the hardships of life and developed a thorough understanding of worldly affairs. However, sometimes I seem to be clear in the head, while other times I get confused. Confucius said: "At seventy one can do as one pleases without breaking the established rules. " He himself had probably reached the realm of great spiritual awakening. However, living in a materialistic society and bustling about all day long, ordinary men like us are burdened with the provision of daily necessities for our family and tempted by material and sensual pleasures. As our pursuit of personal gains is invariably accompanied by worries, it is extremely difficult for us to have our own way.
For old people, "do as one pleases" does not mean that you can do whatever you want to do by taking advantage of your seniority. To put it in plain terms, "do as one pleases" simply means that one may live in one's own way and build at the depth of one's soul a private "domain of freedom" .Like fish leaping about in the wide sea and birds flying in the vast sky, we can enjoy the maximum of freedom. This kind of freedom is both infinite and finite, that is, the infinite "do-as-one-pleases" within the finite space of life. This, I think, is what Confucius meant when he said "one can do as one pleases without breaking the established rules. /