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>WORTH THINKING ABOUT: THE STAGES OF LIFE >Author Betty Friedan writes: >"It is time we start searching for the fountain of age, time that >we stop denying our growing older and look at the actuality of our own >experience, and that of other women and men who have gone beyond denial to >a new place in their sixties, seventies, eighties. It is time to look at >age on its own terms, and put names on its values and strengths as they are >actually experienced, breaking through the definition of age solely as >deterioration or decline from youth. Only then will we see that the problem >is not age itself, to be denied or warded off as long as possible, that the >problem is not those increasing numbers of people living beyond sixty-five, >to be segregated from the useful, valuable, pleasurable activities of >society so that the rest of us can keep our illusion of staying forever >young. Nor is the basic political problem the burden on society of those >forced into deterioration, second childhood, even senility. The problem is >not how we can stay young forever, personally--or avoid facing society's >problems politically by shifting them onto age. The problem is, first of >all, how to break through the cocoon of our illusory youth and risk a new >stage in life, where there are not prescribed role models to follow, no >guidepost, no rigid rules or visible rewards, to step out into the true >existential unknown of these new years of life now open to us, and to find >our own terms for living it." Betty Friedan's "The Fountain of Age." "http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/newscup.html" janet paterson 53 now / 41 dx pd / 37 onset pd / 44 dx cd / 43 onset cd tel: 613 256 8340 url: "http://www.geocities.com/janet313/" email: "[log in to unmask]" smail: PO Box 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada