[vaticanplum]

I love getting older. Certain things freak me out, and I'm not immune to vanity and the typically ageist connotations that come with it, but for the most part I feel like every year I am more of myself. Less and less beholden to what other people want from me or think of me, which allows me to build the life I want. And I would say I was never somebody who cared overmuch about that in the first place. There's just something intangible about it as you get older.

It also gives you the benefit of a lot of experience and knowledge but the self-awareness to know that your experience and knowledge is self-filtered and not the be-all and end-all.

It's not always easy, but I figure if I keep living the life I want, I'll be ok to die when it happens, or at least feel that I have made my best effort. In any case, I'll be dead, so it doesn't really bother me too much. The idea of bad health, of prolonged illness, scares me much, much more than dying.