WRITING TOPIC – GROWING OLDER

Sarah (Book of Genesis), gouache on wooden board retablo,
painting © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

You can’t stop it. The tick-tock of the clock.

Once I heard someone say that time doesn’t pass (as if we’re standing still and time flows on by); instead, we pass through time.

Perhaps you don’t want to stop the passage of time. Maybe you’re one of those people who believes that, like fine wine, we just get better with age.

An MSNBC article that came out in 2007 cited research indicating that even people who develop chronic illness late in life have a good chance of living to the age of 100. The key is lifestyle. Good nutrition, exercise, and avoiding smoking all can attribute to longevity.

According to the 2000 census, the U.S. boasted more than 50,000 centenarians at that time, and the number of people aged 100 or more is expected to double by 2010.

   

     

How do you approach aging? Is it something you look forward to or something you dread?

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes.
                              ~Frank Lloyd Wright

Time wounds all heels.
                               ~Dorothy Parker

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
                              ~Edith Wharton

Perhaps you’re dealing with aging parents and have gotten a glimpse of what is to come. (Da golden years, my foot! More like da-crepit years!)

                 

Take a look at yourself in the mirror. Examine closely all the places where your skin gives away the aging process. Check out your crow’s feet. Does your brow carry the worry of your life? How about the spot between your eyebrows?

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
                              ~Mark Twain

Think of all the ways we talk about aging. Growing old gracefully. No spring chicken. Past one’s prime. One foot in the grave. Senile, advanced, in decline, geriatric, antiquated, ancient, hag, wrinkled, winter of life. Older but wiser.

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.
                              ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am not young enough to know everything.
                              ~Oscar Wilde

Write about growing older. Write about it whether it matters to you greatly or not. Write about the passage of time as if time is running out. (It is.) Write, write, write. For 15 minutes. For the rest of your life. Now go.

Once you’re over the hill, you begin to pick up speed.
                              ~Charles M. Shultz

    

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