aging

In her 20__, a woman__ breasts double her self-esteem. In her 40__, they halve it.

The older you get, the faster time passes in your mind, so use your time according to what is most important.

There is no old age. There is, as there always was, only you.

In terms of days and moments lived, you__l never again be as young as you are right now, so spend this day, the youth of your future, in a way that deflects regret. Invest in yourself. Have some fun. Do something important. Love somebody extra. In one sense, you__e just a kid, but a kid with enough years on her to know that every day is priceless. (418)

Perception of a self is not simply about actuality. Human beings_ identities are self-generating and people constantly revise and recreate the story of their being. Coming-into-being, not being, is the highest expression of reality. We only attain the fullest knowledge of a living thing including ourselves when we know what it was, understand what it now is, and understand what it can become. We do not know the truth of a living thing__ existence until we discern its entire history from development to demise.

No age of life is inglorious. Youth has its merits, but living to a ripe old age is the true statement of value. Aging is the road that we take to discern our character. Fame and fortune can elude us, but character is immortal. We must encounter a sufficient variety of experiences including both failures and accomplishments in order to gain nobility of character.

Age 50 is the mile marker where any mildly perceptive person becomes acutely aware that he or she alone is accountable for the content and coherence of their character.

though aging reduces speed, it increases experience and understanding

Aging is not our fault, but we certainly are guilty of feeling it.

The truth is, I can choose to view tough times as growing times, I can choose to see aging as seasoning and I can choose to focus on whatever good there is to be found in living. I choose. After all, it__ my point of view.

It was painful to contemplate the distance between the future of accomplishment I'd imagined for myself twenty years earlier, and the reality...it was painful to understand that the cushion of exceptionality invoked by the drug had made me oblivious to my inertia. And it was painful to have to define myself again, at an age when most people are happy in their own skins.

It's very simple. As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.

To understand how growth, aging and death works, you must understand the radiation environment.

Sunrise paints the sky with pinks and the sunset with peaches. Cool to warm. So is the progression from childhood to old age.

Let me tell you something, honey. When your boobs fall south and that pretty skin of yours looks like you__e been tanning in a nuclear war zone, you__l see what I mean about independence. When the looks are gone, all you__e got left is your spirit, and ya gotta use it until you lose it. That and the occasional sponge bath from Francisco, but soon his ass will be just as wrinkly as mine. Beauty fades, but a strong will keeps ya young and springy.-Miss Velma

If You Don't Believe the Numbers and Believe in Your Spirit, then You're Ageless.

...alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life--it was not worth much--not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage,he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one--we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist.

One by one they are being picked off around him: in his small circle of colleagues the ratio slowly grows top-heavy, more ghosts, more each winter, and fewer living... and with each one, he thinks he feels patterns on his cortex going dark, settling to sleep forever, parts of whoever he's been losing all definition, reverting to dumb chemistry...