It is important that age be no impediment to the magnet for life in us. Life is not about breathing only. Life is about becoming more than we are, about being all that we can be. The gift of years come to many who realize that these later years are a gift, not a burden. It is about the enterprise of embracing the blessings of this time and overcoming the burdens of it. That is the spiritual task of later life.
The real truth is that there is no such thing as having only one life to live. The fact is that every life is simply a series of lives, each one of them with its own task, its own flavor, its own brand of errors, its own type of sins, its own glories−all designed to lead us to the same end, happiness and a sense of fulfillment. These are the capstone years, the time in which a whole new life is in the making again. The gift of these years is not merely being alive, it is the gift of becoming more fully alive than ever.
