Why We Grow Old

It's not so much age -- as it is whether a person is constantly improving, or constantly getting worse.  The surest way for things to get worse, is to deny that there is any problem -- because then one doesn't seek a solution but accepts the problem, as the way things ought to be -- ie. "just getting old."

All of life is a problem we need to solve.  The challenges are different at different times in our lives -- but we still have to rise to that challenge every day of our lives.  That IS life.  That is what all life faces, and when they can no longer meet that challenge, they perish -- quite understandably.  That is the way of the world.

Most of the problems that people accept as the normal, are conditions they can do something about -- but are conditioned (educated) to accept them as normal by whatever peer group says it is so.  That's why it is good to have a diversity of exposures rather than the consensus that everybody has to be that one way -- of inevitably and invariably getting worse, but maybe going into denial about it.

Some can and do get better -- but not necessarily in the old and familiar ways.  Younger is not necessarily better.  Better is something else entirely different -- and not just more or less of the old and familiar.  And that is the mistake many of the old make -- in wanting to go back to their youth -- instead of exploring and creating the greater life ahead, which no one taught them to do, or was possible, so they don't do it, and can't imagine it possible, or another way.

That is the very crux of the problem.