I’m slowly reading Joan Chittister’s book The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully.  

And, of course, this can apply to any of us at any age.  There’s always someone to mentor.

Chittister: 

Now, too, we have a responsibility to mentor the generations after us in the values and ideals that built a society based on equality, respect for others, and pluralism. More than that, we have the spiritual responsibility to see life as a moral force rather than simply a private enterprise.

We need to come to understand to the center of our souls that age is not a disease.  It is a new experience in how to live life, how to milk it dry of goodness, of energy, of gratitude, of calm and quiet creativity.  

The burden of a lack of commitment to accomplishment means that we have moved into a period of suspended animation, that aging is nothing more than deterioration.  The truth is that aging means aging. Nothing more, nothing less. It is just us grown ripe.

The blessing of a commitment to accomplishment is that, as we continue to bring out considerable skills, experience, and insight to bear on the present needs of humankind, we will certainly become wiser, definitely spiritually stronger, and more than ever a blessing to the rest of society.

Emily Dickinson wrote: We turn not older with years, but newer every day.