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AGING

An eradicator of all but memories.

A constant reminder that the journey ends.

Mechanisms faltering and under constant repair.

The cost of living that yields unexpected interest.

A hardening kernel encased in a cracking shell.

A constant reordering and succumbing for all living things.

Gradually changing ‘seasons’ presenting new situations and challenges.

A process that can either enhance patience, insight and wisdom or wither inexorably.

Intrepid striving to realize potentials while being undermined by nature’s incessant ‘movement’.

For the superficial and vain: ‘Distortions’ and disasters; for the sagacious and mature: Welcome hallmarks.
 

• Perhaps the best of you is always yet to be.
   
• Perhaps who you are is gradually written on your face.
   
• Perhaps infancy begins a quest for character that requires challenges.
   
• Perhaps what is within never ages, perhaps it grows with experience.
   
• Perhaps all living things deteriorate and decay; perhaps only spirit grows and triumphs.
   
• Perhaps bodily problems provide opportunities for maturing, for accepting and re-ordering priorities.
   
• Perhaps aging is a blessing: the infirmities of some bringing out the concern, caring and nurturing of others.
   
• Perhaps aging is a constant reminder that the state you are in is temporary … that you had better make the most of what is now.
   
• Perhaps with each line and furrow and the slowing of your ‘gait’, you gradually realize that your inner determination is your only recourse.
   
• Perhaps we should ask who appreciates life more: a twenty year old or an eighty year old? Who has more self-composure, greater acceptance of what is? Who has more accurate perceptions, knows more of common pitfalls, mankind’s follies? Who relishes beauty and art unselfconsciously, unabashedly? Who is closer to the Greater Reality?
  
  your thoughts on growing old gracefully??

ESSAY ON AGING by EDWIN O’SHEA

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