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
redravine.wordpress.com 
🙂 Thinking a space has been added for my Writing Practice! Thank you…I will come to this.
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I enjoyed this post. All of the quotes are good, but my favorite is Emerson.
I am getting ready to paint another self portrait. I am thinking Rembrandt had a good idea…painting his aging process. So I’ll paint as long as I can see and hold a paint brush!
I hate to keep talking about my Grandma Bessie on here, but at 101 (in June) she is the best authority on aging I know.
I wanted to share a funny story about her.
A few months ago she fell. She was okay, but my Aunt could not get her up. My Aunt called for help and some firemen came.
My Grandmother said she looked up at all those good-looking men leaning over her..and she thought she had died and gone to heaven.
Someone said, “Grandma, I’m surprised at you!” She winked and said, “I may be old, but I ain’t dead!”
I like that line. “I may be old…but I ain’t dead!” 🙂
Thanks for a great post!
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You’re welcome! And thanks for sharing the story about Grandma Bessie. You can talk about her anytime you want on this site. She sounds like such a treasure in your life!!
Ha — I like her line, too. Oh, you’re so lucky to have your grandma. I miss mine so much.
We don’t have such great genes in our family. One grandfather lived to be early 90s. His wife, the only grandma I knew, died in her 80s, early 80s. My dad was orphaned at age 14, I think.
But old age seems to be only a blessing if health and mind are intact, yes?
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Hey, Spiritdwel, funny you should mention a writing practice space. QM and I have talked about how we might be able to add something — a space — for our readers who don’t have blogs.
We have the DAILY HAIKU post for people to post their haikus. And we have posted some guest writing practices as separate posts, but that’s not quite the same. (Plus, we’d like to expand on what Writing Practice is before we publish separate guest Writing Practice posts in earnest.)
Anyhow, all that to say that we haven’t quite figured out the best approach to giving readers/writers space on the blog to post their writing practices. It’s OK if you want to try doing something here in comments. I don’t know if there are length limitations, so you might want to be watchful of that.
In the mean time, we do plan to work on a good solution to providing space, so stay tuned. Hopefully it won’t be too long in coming.
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Thank you for the article. It urged to think.
It is fine to look young, but our life style can help a little in wrestling with the Time. It is knowing of what for do we live that guards us from the wrinkles on face.
It is good to be healthy If we are not alone and have the friends to visit…
I like lots of things, but they all are just the tools that are the needless in the loneliness.
Good health is good, of course, but we have no right to make it the selfish goal. When we walk in Spirit, the love makes the white-headed the child in spite of all obstacles on his road.
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I’m turning 40 this year. And while many laugh when I say I’m getting old, I find it harder to laugh along with them.
I have abused my body for many years and can probably say that, even if I make some radical lifestyle changes, I’m past the half way point. Which shouldn’t really come as a shock but it still stings. Up to this point, I’ve lived a fairly good life. I’ve got some offspring to carry the name and am leaving a good amount of inspiration behind.
But there must be more to give. More to do and see and think and write about. Much more. And time is running out.
So I’d better get busy, I guess. The end is coming, but I don’t have to fold my hands and stop the process of being a contributor.
Thanks for the prompt . . .
Brian
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Thanks, Tomas. And Brian, 40’s a big one. I distinctly remember when I turned 40. It felt like the beginning of the second part of my life. The aging process is strange, something I didn’t think much about until my early 40’s. And now, in my 50’s — it’s so clear that every moment counts.
I don’t think that urgency to want to get busy is a bad thing. I feel it, too. None of us is going to live forever. And some of us not past tomorrow. We just never know.
I’m kind of looking forward to doing the Writing Practice on this Writing Topic. I want to see where it leads me. What am I really feeling in there about aging — looks notwithstanding. 8)
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[…] -related to Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – GROWING OLDER […]
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[…] -related to Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – GROWING OLDER […]
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[…] Bo keeps a blog called Seeded Earth. -This piece is based on a writing practice for red Ravine’s WRITING TOPIC – GROWING OLDER. […]
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[…] Older. Bob Chrisman is a Kansas City, Missouri writer whose piece Hands, about his mother’s hands, appeared last month on red Ravine. Growing Older is based on a writing practice that Bob did on WRITING TOPIC – GROWING OLDER. […]
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