We Grizzle Everyday
Cannot help but think about aging. One must experience before one begins to know. I do not think that the failing of powers that come with the fading of youth would be intelligible if one were told ahead of time what is in store. How could one imagine the slow failure of eyesight, or the onset of diabetes, or the joint ache in the morning, etc. All of this without one identifiable cause. And then there is the memory of a good nights sleep…… Everyone is different; there is no standard of aging as no two sunsets are alike.
I think of aging as applicable to our society. It seems as if our time has passed, our powers failing, no longer able to care for basic needs, — education, health care, productive and remunerative work. Cost/availability of these basic components of our life together become increasingly out of reach. We grizzle everyday.
Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease:
All others run into this one
We call it by many names,—
fever,
intemperance,
insanity,
stupidity,
and crime.
They are all forms of old age.
They are rest, conservatism, appropriation, inertia;
not newness, not the way onward.
We grizzle everyday.–excerpt, Circles by Ralph Waldo Emerson
