it's very simple.

as you grow, you learn more. if you stayed at twenty-two, you'd always be as ignorant as you were at twenty-two. aging is not just decay, you know. it's growth. it's more than the negative that you're going to die. it's also the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.

yes, i said, but if aging were so valuable, why do people always say, oh if i were young again. you never hear people say, i wish i were sixty-five.

he smiled. you know what that reflects? unsatisfied lives. unfulfilled lives. lives that haven't found meaning. because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. you want to go forward. you want to see more, do more. you can't wait until sixty-five... you have to find what's good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. looking back makes you competitive. and, age is not a competitive issue... the truth is, part of me is every age. i'm a three-year-old, i'm a five-year-old, i'm a thirty-seven-year-old, i'm a fifty-year-old. i've been through all of them, and i know what it's like. i delight in being a child when it's appropriate to be a child. i delight in being a wise old man when it's appropriate to be a wise old man. think of all i can be! i am every age, up to my own. do you understand?

i nodded.

how can i be envious of where you are - when i've been there myself?
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it's been awhile, i know. happy belated (and future) birthdays.