Monday, April 7, 2008

Age

It's where we're all headed. It's what brought me to this blog. Yet we're afraid of it. 

Why are we afraid of the old? I see the young all the time, but the old are often kept inside. We don't bring them out to play - they aren't part of the fabric of our daily life. 

Is it the vulnerability? A reminder of our own frailty? Of the reality of our very precarious existence? The old, the slow and the chronically ill... how do they make you feel when you see them? 

I'm guilty of this fear, especially lately. It's very personal - I am not untouched ...

I guess I feel like thinking about your own mortality is can be horrifying if you don't already have a philosophy to address the difference between life and death.  Maybe that's why we don't want to go there in our minds. 

Perhaps we have lost sight of the value of the old. I don't understand all the forces that have made this so but I want to die in community, a society even, that values the old. I don't want to be cast aside or isolated during my wait to die.