NYU professor and author Oliver Sacks writes about what it’s like to turn 80, and how old age has empowered him. A must-read for anyone who feels “past their prime:”
One has had a long experience of life, not only one’s own life, but others’, too. One has seen triumphs and tragedies, booms and busts, revolutions and wars, great achievements and deep ambiguities, too. One has seen grand theories rise, only to be toppled by stubborn facts. One is more conscious of transience and, perhaps, of beauty. At 80, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age. I can imagine, feel in my bones, what a century is like, which I could not do when I was 40 or 60. I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.
I am looking forward to being 80.
Read the rest of his essay here.
via 99U http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/The99Percent/~3/oDZ3AGAMKYk/the-creative-freedom-of-getting-older
No comments:
Post a Comment