“A burden of these years is that being alone, bad as it feels, is easier than doing what it takes to be with someone else. It would be so much easier now to close the sunshades of our soul and give up. So much easier to wait for death to claim what has already died in us- a love for life and a trust in its essential goodness. So we cut ourselves out of our own lives and watch them wither away.

A blessing of these years is that they offer us the chance to be excited by new personalities, new people, all over again. Does it demand that we fall in love? No. But it does demand that we love someone else enough to be just as interested in them as we are in ourselves. It demands that we set out to make tomorrow happy.”

-Joan Chittister, The Gift of Years.

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It sometimes feels as if the world and the people in it would wish for us to go away and die. I am not ready to die. I have a lot to offer. I know a part of me is already dying; we all feel that as we age. But I’m with Chittister. Our lives are in the soul, and mine is quite awake and eager to live. I won’t voluntarily give up on it, or on me. Since our culture sometimes doesn’t seem to care for us, we need to go inward and do it ourselves. It’s possible. Chittister is by far my favorite writer about old age.  – Jon