To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. Then we row for years on the midsummer pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage, that began without harm, scatters into debris on the shore, and a friend from school drops cold on a rocky strand. If a new love carries us past middle age, our wife will die at her strongest and most beautiful. New women come and go. All go. The pretty lover who announces that she is temporary is temporary. The bold woman, middle-aged against our old age, sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand. Another friend of decades estranges himself in words that pollute thirty years. Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge and affirm that it is fitting and delicious to lose everything.
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Too true for some but not for all. But in the end, ultimately you are on your own, even with family around you. Growing older and old is a unique experience.
It's true. I never would have expected it when I was in my 20s. Then when I lost someone I wanted to burn down the world. Now I almost feel affection toward my collection of heartbreaks. These changes are coming to feel more like small initiations into the depth and vastness of living. Over time with some prompting, I started to get curious about impermamence itself and started to recognize it as the flavor and texture of experience. Metamorphosis. Getting on friendlier terms with the changiness. I'm glad I've lived long enough to see that. Death is normal but so is rebirth. Wisdom! Thanks for posting.