Age graciously

We age one brush stroke at a time- a receding hairline, a line of gray , a surreptitious wrinkle here, a wrinkle there and you are  in the ageing process.  With time, we are no longer  our ebullient selves, with the energy of youth and air of confidence but  much slower selves,  a slowness of step and the desire for support  and companionship. Encounter with old age is never gentle, we cannot sidestep old age, we need to embrace it. As painful as the physical aspect of aging can be it is also cultural, the social verdict  that can be disconcerting.

And yet, we can take kindly the counsel of years. If nature can change with its seasons , mountains can erode and rivers run dry and everything is subject to transience why not ourselves? If life has been fair to us in its heyday, has given us the exuberance to live a full life it is our turn to age graciously. We must be able to distinguish what is in our power to control and command and what is not and accepting the latter is
stoic wisdom.

 In the magic of recollection, we relive the moments of joy, even moments of distress that enriched and added meaning to our lives and we feel that our lives have not been in vain. Standing near lifes summit  we can see further, discerning  hidden contours of the past , narrative arcs that eluded our younger selves and  see our  lives as whole. With all our experience with all the meaning we have gathered out of life we have much to give and less to lose. 

“None are so old as those who have outlived  enthusiasm” said Thoreau. To continue to experience lifes ecstasies we need to develop new interests, revisit old friends and places, read the new books and reread the old and indulge in those trips of nostalgia that are a salve to the soul. No longer seeking praise or approbation, we  have earned our liberation after a life time of effort to be at peace with ourselves and the world. The final task of old age is not raging against the dying of the light but trusting that the light lives in others and our baton will be passed on. Finding happiness in the inconsequentiality of daily existence, counting the colours of the rainbow, age finds fulfilment.