Aging is beyond our control, but how we age is up to us. The 50s represent everything you were meant to be. It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age. The afternoon of life is just as full of meaning as the morning; only, its meaning and purpose are different. Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.
Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. By the time you’re fifty, you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it. The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life. The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.
Maturity comes not with age but with the acceptance of responsibility. It’s an attitude built by experience. You are only young once, but immaturity can last a lifetime. Maturity is the ability to think, speak, and act on your feelings within the bounds of dignity. It is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values. It is the capacity to endure uncertainty. It is the ability to reap without apology and not complain when things don’t go well. Maturity is when you stop making excuses and start making changes.
Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun, as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday. With age comes the inner, the higher life. Who would be forever young, to dwell always in externals?
The soul grows more spiritual with age. It has an absolute, unforgiving need for regular excursions into enchantment. Aging is a moral and spiritual frontier because its unknowns, terrors, and mysteries cannot be successfully crossed without humility and self-knowledge. The journey toward authentic power involves becoming aware of your emotions, acknowledging them, and learning from them. Aging is not a disease but a natural progression in the art of living.
In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive. And at the end of life, we need others to survive. But here’s the secret: in between, we need others as well. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, awareness, discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty little unsexy ways every day.
At this point in my life I’d like to live as if only love mattered. Whatever your age, I can assure you that it’s the best time to go about the business of doing what you were called to do. If you can allow yourself to breathe into the depth, wonder, beauty, craziness, and strife—everything that represents the fullness of your life—you can live fearlessly. Because you come to realize that if you just keep breathing, you cannot be conquered.
Quote: Age is no crime but the shame of a deliberately wasted life among so many deliberately wasted lives is. Charles Bukowski
Song Accompaniment: Seven Bridges Road, Eagles
Artwork: The Art of Seth
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Despair Is The Breakthrough, An Essay Made Of Quotes
Endnotes are in the same order as the sentences they refer to.
[i] Lewis Richmond, Aging as a Spiritual Practice: A Contemplative Guide to Growing Older and Wiser (New York: Gotham Books, 2012), p. 3.
[ii] Oprah Winfrey, O, The Oprah Magazine (New York: Hearst Communications, May 2004).
[iii] Margaret Mead, Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1949), p. 247.
[iv] Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1933), p. 125.
[v] Betty Friedan, The Fountain of Age (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), p. 75.
[vi] Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955), p. 19.
[vii] Marie Dressler, My Own Story, as told to Mildred Harrington (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1934), p. 265.
[viii] Marie Dressler, My Own Story, as told to Mildred Harrington (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1934), p. 265.
[ix] Muhammad Ali, as quoted in The Observer, November 16, 1975.
[x] Robert Greene, Mastery (New York: Viking Penguin, 2012), p. 22.
[xi] Edwin Louis Cole, On Becoming a Real Man (1982), p. 55.
[xii] Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics (2011), p. 119.
[xiii] Edwin Louis Cole, On Becoming a Real Man (1982), p. 55.
[xiv] Samuel Ullman, Youth: A Poem (1918).
[xv] Joshua L. Liebman, Peace of Mind (1946).
[xvi] John Huston Finley, as quoted in The New York Times, March 7, 1935.
[xvii] Jim Rohn, as quoted in The Treasury of Quotes (1996), p. 45.
[xviii] Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart (2016).
[xix] Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), p. 123.
[xx] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1815-1897 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993), p. 352.
[xxi] Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eighty Years and More: Reminiscences 1815-1897 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993), p. 352.
[xxii] Thomas Moore, Ageless Soul: The Lifelong Journey Toward Meaning and Joy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), p. 45
[xxiii] Thomas Moore, Ageless Soul: The Lifelong Journey Toward Meaning and Joy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), p. 45.
[xxiv] Thomas R. Cole, The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 253.
[xxv] Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), p. 45.
[xxvi] Thomas Moore, Ageless Soul: The Lifelong Journey Toward Meaning and Joy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), p. 78.
[xxvii] Morrie Schwartz, as quoted in Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 157.
[xxviii] Morrie Schwartz, as quoted in Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 157.
[xxix] Morrie Schwartz, as quoted in Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 157.
[xxx] David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009), p. 120.
[xxxi] Tracy Chapman, At This Point In My Life, New Beginning (1995).
[xxxii] Oprah Winfrey, O, The Oprah Magazine (New York: Hearst Communications, May 2001).
[xxxiii] Oprah Winfrey, O, The Oprah Magazine (New York: Hearst Communications, May 2004).
[xxxiv] Oprah Winfrey, O, The Oprah Magazine (New York: Hearst Communications, May 2004).