Home Stretch

It’s true that getting, ahem, older may offer up a few indignities—starting with the uninvited appearance of that AARP card in the mail announcing your membership in a club you’d probably rather not be a part of—but there are benefits as well to finding oneself well on the downside of the “over the hill” hill.

Giving yourself permission to coast down that hill is probably one of those rewards—sweet respite from a life spent doing things, achieving things, collecting things.

In this essay in the New York Times, author Patricia Hampl unfolds this metaphor, investigating her own reaction to being a Boomer in the “third stage” of life. And what she discovers is this:

“Real life begins to reveal itself as something other than effort, other than accomplishment. Real life wishes to be left to its own purposeless devices.”

To read the full text of her essay, click here.

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