Aging

Thinking about aging, and the problems it brings, might be (as Groucho Marx famously said) a luxury you only get if you’re lucky.

Then, the other day I came across this statement by Samuel Beckett (to Lawrence Shainberg)

“I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance…

Now my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared.

I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself,

‘It’s a lie!’ So I know I was right.

It’s the best chance I’ve ever had.”

Perhaps, without those cumbersome memories, without the glib fluency of youth, without those easy certainties, it really is a kind of freedom. At last.