What shall I do with the fact of aging? Replace the potential of my youth with the accomplishments of my maturity. This hearkens back to the discussion of friendship surrounding Rule 3, and the story of Socrates’ trial and death—which might be summarized, as follows: A life lived thoroughly justifies its own limitations. The young man with nothing has his possibilities to set against the accomplishments of his elders. It’s not clear that it’s necessarily a bad deal, for either. “An aged man is but a paltry thing,” wrote William Butler Yeats, “A tattered coat upon a stick, unless/Soul clap its
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