The first words of comfort I found in a short writing by the director of the Sacred Mountain, The joy of aging (Feltrinelli - 2013).

"When, with age and the renunciation of any seduction, we have reached a high level of Consciousness, we can dissolve the ties that keep us tied to the body: it is the temple in which we lived so we do not deny it, but while respecting it we stop consider it our identity. Even if we are programmed to live a long life, we know that we are much closer to the end than a few years ago. We are able to grasp the beauty of the passing of time. Every second of life seems like a sublime gift to us. .

Like the terminally ill, aware that we have limited time, we no longer stick to grandiose projects: we are content with what we are, not what we will be; of what we have, not of what we will have. We stop clinging to the superfluous, we let hopes dissolve, and when hopes cease, fear ceases. Everything is a gift: the small satisfactions, the subtle messages of the senses, the affection that warms our heart like a balm, the kind encounters with other human beings, the ability to be of help to others. Every day is a good day.

Aging does not mean mentally decaying or becoming a ruin. If we have been concerned with keeping our bodies healthy by avoiding drugs and foods that are harmful or taken in an exaggerated way; if we have taken care of doing a little physical exercise every day, of meditating or contemplating, of learning new things by developing a placid humility in the face of impermanence, we will maintain youthful lucidity until the end: thanks to the angelic state that derives from us from the decline of sexual desire, old age is a wonderful phase of our life. Perhaps the best ...
Free from anguish, ambitions. useless possessions, unrealizable illusions, free from the desire to be recognized; able to love even those who hate us, to accept attacks and criticisms with sympathy, to silence the intellect, to open ourselves in all directions, to help others to get rid of suffering, even if we are more present than ever we know live as if we have already disappeared. enjoying the supreme pleasure of creating artistically for the love of the work and not for the love of applause, to collaborate in the change of society, to work for a better world and, above all, to direct young people towards the awakening of Consciousness.

The art of aging (Adelphi - 2006) is a collection of posthumous notes that the great philosopher had titled Senilia. Here are some excerpts from the introduction by Franco Volpi.

"So here is the reason for this art of growing old. Here we have a meditative and consoling accompaniment to the sunset of life, a vademecum in which the cornerstones of a practical reflection are set that since the beginnings of Western thought alongside philosophical wisdom, taking body also in an iconographic tradition in which the philosopher is gladly represented in the features of the old sage capable of prefiguring the last age of life as a desirable condition.

From Aristone's lost Peri ghéros to Cicero's Cato Maior or De senectute: from Galen's De marcore to De retardatione accidentium senectutis and the corpus of geriatric writings attributed to Ruggero Bacone; from De sanitate tuenda by Gerolamo Cardano to De conservanda iuventute et retardanda senectute by Amaldo di Villanova, up to the pleasant praise of old age by the positivist Paolo Mantegazza: there is an entire gerontological treatise that through a balanced distribution of vituperatio and laudatio, combined with a reflection on the age of life and its brevity seeks to relativize the impairments that old age brings with it, highlighting its advantages and opportunities by contrast, and teaching us to make virtue of necessity.

It is known the apophthegma attributed to Sophocles, according to which he would have been pleased to be old because he finally felt free from the sexual impulses of which man is subjected in the other ages of life. Therefore older, more beautiful. However, the Sophoclean sentence has become famous and has been continuously handed down more for its paradox than for its truth: no one really wants to grow old. Since old age is wisdom, but also weakness. And yes, experience and sensibility, but also asthenia and lability in the active life of every day. And yes, the ability to offer advice, but young people really live life.

Yet, precisely in the perspective of self-care and self-realization, old age represents the time of harvest, the point of fulfillment of existence. The old man - freed from impulses and appetites, satisfied his ambitions and laid down the commitments of vita activa, rich in the experience acquired in the course of life - is the one who is entirely self-sufficient. who derives from himself all the satisfaction and happiness without needing to look for them in other things, in the pleasures of the flesh, of which he is no longer capable, or in the fame mundi, which he has already obtained or which he has renounced. He is the one who has eventually become what he is and rejoins himself, being fully sovereign over himself and enjoying his own self-sufficiency. One who only needs to remain himself. Without getting to the myth of Methuselah, let's say: old is beautiful.

In this perspective, the old man is not an invalid of time, and old age is not simply the decline of life that it is a question of delaying as much as possible, the phase of senile "chaos" and of the inebriation that leads to death. Rather, it becomes the fulfillment of existence, the positive end for which one prepares oneself and towards which the entire course of life is polarized.