Aging: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

The unread book

Our culture often notices an older person’s gait, wrinkles, or failing memory before it notices their interior life. We see the cover and leave the book unopened.

Inside may be a lifetime of errors survived, love given, strange turns, private courage, and knowledge that no search engine can reproduce. To look within another person is also a practice of The God Within.

You have never been better

When someone asks how he is, Larry often answers, “I’ve never been better.” It is not a claim that his knees never hurt or that loss has stopped visiting. It means he has one more day of seeing, failing, correcting, and learning than he had yesterday.

Being better does not mean being without pain. New grief may prove that you had something precious to lose. A deeply lived life leaves marks.

Today is not the youngest you will ever be. It is the most life you have ever lived.

Meet the new reality

Fear of aging spends the present rehearsing losses that have not arrived. When the fear alarm sounds, pause. Ask what is true now. Then ask: what can I do today to become better tomorrow?

A changing body and a changing world require creativity. The goal is not to praise every limitation. It is to stop letting a limitation decide whether your life still contains meaning, love, humor, work, or wonder.

Make the bend

Respecting older people is not charity. It is a recognition of human value that does not expire when youth or speed does. Talk with them. Ask better questions. Listen for what is alive beneath appearance.

Every act that restores attention and dignity makes the world a little more just. And if we are fortunate enough to grow old, we may enter that age knowing it is not exile. It is another form of becoming.