Growing Old

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about grief and how it affected me, and tried to share a few words I’d read which I thought were helpful. I’ve been so grateful for the positive response to that post. Thank you! It means a great deal to know that something I’ve written may in a tiny way have helped a friend.

Today’s post is a very short one and it’s concerned with the process of ageing. It’s a single quote from one of my favourite books — The Japanese Lover, by Isabel Allende — and as I read it I thought it was a beautiful way to describe how we change as we get older. This isn’t something to fear, though. It’s something we should embrace.
​
"Yesterday, Alma, when at last we could meet to celebrate our birthdays, I could see you were in a bad mood. You said that all of a sudden, without us realising it, we have turned seventy. You are afraid our bodies will fail us, and of what you call the ugliness of age, even though you are more beautiful now than you were at twenty-three. We're not old because we are seventy. We start to grow old as soon as we are born, we change every day, life is a continuous state of flux. We evolve. The only difference is that now we are a little closer to death. What's so bad about that? Love and friendship do not age."