When will you feel valued? Would you be a child again,
happy and cared for? (Or weak and controlled?) In your teens, with adventures
and potential? (Or pressured and confused?) The twenties, newly adult,
beautiful and powerful? (Or unstable, insecure, just getting there?) Surely the
thirties are a worldly ideal: organised, healthy, forging ahead? (Or overwhelmed
with family, work, finances?) You may never feel worse about your age than turning
forty, though you might have half your life before you. Then aging: you’ve
collected a wardrobe of sins, errors and things you could have handled better,
but you now know a trap when you see one. You might have stellar grandchildren.
You might begin to understand your art. The culture of commerce specifies each
age, but you don’t lose value as you grow closer to death. I knew a girl who would
unexpectedly die at fifteen: every moment she shared beauty and treasure. I met
a priest who, in his nineties, heard confession and gave absolution with grace
and kindness. Absolute value. You are a soul for whom Christ died. Beautiful
and powerful. Beauty is given by the light in which you stand.
