My favourite theme music from ON GOLDEN POND.
Sorry but the full movie is not available on YouTube
Of all realities, old age is perhaps that of which we retain a purely abstract notion longest in our lives", said Proust with great accuracy. All men are mortal: they reflect upon this fact. A great many of them become old: almost none ever foresees this state before it is upon him. And yet nothing should be more expected than old age!
Old age is not exactly a time of life that most of us welcome, although it is a privilege to reach it. In Western societies, the shocked realisation that we are growing old often fills us with alarm and even terror. Many attempt to push it as far away as possible, denying that it will ever happen, even though we know it already dwells within us.
You could read more about it in Simone de Beauvoir's definitive study of the universal problem of growing old, "La vieillesse" (1970), in the US as "The Coming of Age" (1972), but for my money - $26.99 plus $12.70 for postage - I prefer the absorbing and sumptuously illustrated "The Long History of Old Age" which I bought on ebay before Alzheimer's got me.
