“Eighty! I can hardly believe it. My father, who lived to 94, often said that the 80s had been one of the most enjoyable decades of his life. He felt, as I begin to feel, not a shrinking but an enlargement of mental life and perspective. 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 is more conscious of transience and, perhaps, of beauty. I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure, but as a time of leisure and freedom, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.”
Oliver Sacks in The New York Times
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