How to Age Quotes

“Those who urge us to fight ageing are, in effect, inviting us to stop growing and developing”
― Anne Karpf, How to Age

“Greeting the ageing self In trying to depathologize age, we need to make an important distinction, between resisting ageism (stereotyping or discriminating on the basis of age) and resisting age itself. The first opens the door to a path of rich potential, freeing us to keep on developing and changing, while the second closes it, condemning us to an endless attempt to recover the irretrievable.”
― Anne Karpf, How to Age

“How different the life cycle looks if we substitute the word ‘growth’ for ageing. The word ‘age’ has become so contaminated by contempt and fear that it’s tempting to dispense with it altogether. Better, though, to try to reclaim it, detoxify it and attach it to the whole life cycle, rather than just offloading the idea of ageing onto later life. For to age is to live and to live is to age, and being anti-age (as so many products proudly proclaim themselves) is tantamount to being anti-life. By embracing age we embrace the life process itself, with all its pain, joy and difficulty. If we can cultivate a respect for our own growth, and develop the ability to greet our ageing self with both pleasure and realism, and without the need to either idealize or deride its younger incarnation, then we’re putting in place important capacities that will serve us our entire lives.”
― Anne Karpf, How to Age

“Our civilization really does not harbour a concept of the whole of life”
― Anne Karpf, How to Age

“When we de-repress the fear of death, we reclaim the energy that has gone into denial. We feel buoyed up as streams of creative energy course through our bodies, minds and nervous systems. By facing a subject that usually depresses and terrifies us, we feel lighter, freer, more perceptually and cognitively alive in all our encounters....Old age will no longer be a synonym for death, or dying, but for living.”
― Anne Karpf, How to Age