Description
“We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience, almost beyond our capacity at times, but something to be carried high. If it is a long defeat it is also a victory…”
The playwright and Jungian analyst Florida Scott-Maxwell was in her eighties when she wrote these lines, which begin one of the most extraordinary documents of any stage of life. With a candid introspection that recalls the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Maxwell assesses the special predicament of age: when one feels both cut off from the past and out of step with the present; when the body rebels at activity, but the mind becomes more passionate than ever. But this predicament also affords her a panoramic vision of the issues that haunt us throughout our lives: how to reconcile our impulses towards good and evil; how to attain individuality in a mass society; and how to emerge– out of suffering, loss and limitation– with something approaching wisdom.
