First you are a child and there is no end to it.  Everybody bosses you around, you don’t know squat and time drags by forever. You become a teenager.  Oh shit shit shit!  The passion, the love, the hate, the boredom…  Adolescence comes after going through a veil: everything before it is a little hazy, everything after you emerge is crystal clear, but nothing ever goes right.  Lizard brain is still running things more than it should and in your late teens you drive too fast....

OK, you survive and become an adult.  You get married, have kids, grind on at the job, get fired, get hired, gain a little confidence, lose, win, get a little grey, get a little paunch, acquire things, get looked at less and less by younger and much more beautiful people until you finally become invisible to them.  Finally, there comes a period between middle age and the end of the road – I guess it’s called being old.  It is a time when, if you drew the right genetic cards, you are still in pretty good shape and, finally, things have gone reasonably well in your life --there are delicious, peaceful moments. You have figured things out to a certain extent.  You don’t know everything, but you’ve become more or less competent in the business of life.  It’s a kind of seamanship.  Most of all, you finally know what you always wondered about when you were younger: what it’s like to be ancient?  Not too bad, I can report.  A little stiff in the morning and you can’t take a punch the way you used to, but who needs that anyway?