Aging is a good one.

I like getting older.

The increasing aches, pains, memory failures—sure, I could do without those. But as for the actual adventure of aging, in and of itself? It’s a good one.

Skeptical? Ask anyone who might not have the chance.

I want to age like those elderly people in my life who—fragile, dependent, tired—choose to bless those around them again and again with their words, their love, their prayers, their stories, their grace. Even with their dependence.

I hope I am gifted the privilege of aging into elderliness, and if I am, that I will explore its goodnesses and riches to the very full, becoming each year a little bit more wise, a little bit more understanding, a little bit more storied. But if I don’t live long enough for that, I hope perhaps you Dear Reader might age well for those of us who won’t get a chance. Don’t capitulate to the contagion, and fashion a false identity; instead, be joyfully, delightfully, decidedly just as you are: wondrously aging, each and every day; spiritually content that “twenty-nine” only ever happened once; increasingly beautiful, because you are becoming increasingly old.

Read more at the beauty and goodness of aging.