Old age is a poignant business, a continuous series of losses, which is
why Bette Davis said it wasn’t for sissies. One of its saddest moments is when we realise we are no
longer at home in the world and are baffled at how it operates. When we were young and the future was
filled with promise, it was thrilling to celebrate the constant shift and change of history and embrace
every fad that came off the assembly line, as well as being impatient with those who resisted the new and
clung desperately to the old and outworn. It is a different matter when you realise that, almost without
noticing it, you have joined the ranks not only of the old but of the old fashioned; and that the crazy shifts
of change you embraced so eagerly when you were young are the very energies that are now carrying you
into the past, along with steam trains and quiet Sundays. So it is hardly surprising that the old can begin to
feel like strangers in their own land
why Bette Davis said it wasn’t for sissies. One of its saddest moments is when we realise we are no
longer at home in the world and are baffled at how it operates. When we were young and the future was
filled with promise, it was thrilling to celebrate the constant shift and change of history and embrace
every fad that came off the assembly line, as well as being impatient with those who resisted the new and
clung desperately to the old and outworn. It is a different matter when you realise that, almost without
noticing it, you have joined the ranks not only of the old but of the old fashioned; and that the crazy shifts
of change you embraced so eagerly when you were young are the very energies that are now carrying you
into the past, along with steam trains and quiet Sundays. So it is hardly surprising that the old can begin to
feel like strangers in their own land
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