I am very grateful to still be alive in my mid-70s. Many people do not get to this age and the experience of aging is very interesting and is part of life and I'm glad not to have missed it.
When you're young aging seems like a sad thing and you tend to think of your body getting old and your looks and abilities fading. Those things are true, and they matter, but when you are actually old they matter less and less.
You do have a sense of a life having been lived and that is a good and comforting thing. You of course do hope that it is lived for a while longer. It becomes easier to live in the day - you still plan ahead but you don't count on tomorrow coming in the same way you once did.
If you're lucky, as I have been, you also get to retire in a reasonably comfortable financial and physical situation and the freedom of the post-retirement years for me has been a wonderful thing.
Like most people I think my greatest concern with aging is my mental state and I am grateful every day that I am still able to function on my own. Not that those little "senior moments" when you have trouble recalling something don't cause concern.
Then there is death. It looms closer. Yet it is less of a concern as it does get closer. At my age I have lost friends and of course many of the public figures I grew up knowing have also passed. So there is a feeling that in my turn I will be part of that process of the people and the times I knew passing from the world and I will be simply taking my place in that. It feels a little melancholy but not really frightening.
I don't believe in an afterlife, I think when I die I will simply be gone.
Many people die at young ages which is not "fair". Especially deaths that are not due to illness or accidents but are caused by war, crime, anger, jealousy, poverty- things that don't need to be but are only there because of human actions.
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