How Terribly Strange...

Ageing is a painfully double-edged sword: I've written previously of my youthful longing for the outer signs of maturity - the old man's hands which mine now mirror, the silver streaked hair and beard - but the truth of it is that as we age, we tread an ever finer line between being and not-being: trading our gradually-acquired depth of experience and knowledge - along with long-won freedom from the world of work - for an increasingly tenuous grip on existence,  potentially mediated by the ever-present threat of ailment and illness. A Faustian pact indeed. Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water... I'll leave it to the Bard with Jaques soliloquy to sum it all up:

                                       All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.