All Passion Spent

by Vita Sackville-West

I find that as one grows older one relies more and more on the society of one’s contemporaries and shrinks from the society of the young. They are so tiring. So unsettling. I can scarcely, nowadays, endure the company of anybody under seventy. Young people compel one to look forward on a life full of effort. Old people permit one to look backward on a life whose effort is over and done with. That is reposeful. Repose, Lady Slane, is one of the most important things in life, yet how few people achieve it? How few people, indeed, desire it? The old have it imposed upon them. Either they are infirm, or weary. But half of them still sigh for the energy which once was theirs. Such a mistake.’

I suddenly think I may be an old lady in a middle-aged woman's body. And this may be a wonderful thing.