Aging is the one subject where everyone becomes an expert against their will and without permission. What strikes me is how it rearranges life rather than just diminishing it — the urgent things fall away and what’s left is oddly close to what mattered when we were children: light, weather, growing up, the particular way a flower opens on its second day versus its first. Maybe that’s not decline so much as editing.

I find that this is the time to embrace the world as a whole, rather than just my part of it. I feel like I finally got to the school I could never find in my life, a grand University that helps me understand my life and value the time I have in it. What I promised myself I would never do is nothing.

My fear as I turned 79 a few weeks ago is to decide not ever to allow myself to die from the outside in. I have to live with a body that is changing and not seeking my approval, so I’m just accepting it. It’s the shape of life itself that I can control. It’s not so bad if I accept it. I still live in the now. The world outside is reshaping all the time. I’ll go along.

I think of editing when I think of my life. I was a newspaper editor for a while, and a reporter at others, and editing is all about life and aging. The idea is to make things better.