“For the unlearned,” the Hasids say, “old age is winter, for the learned; it is the harvest season.”

Old age writes Joan Chittister, “is a treasure-house of history – personal history, family history, national history, world history.”

But what do we do when we live in a culture that doesn’t seek answers from the elderly or look for them to share their wisdom? When we are discarded, expected to go quietly into the darkness.

In the older members of society, she writes, lies the taproots of that society. It goes down deeper into the past than any others.

The elders know where every idea has come from and why.

They know what it means to be family, to be citizens, to be free, to be enslaved.

They know the difference between evolution and revolution, and there is room for both in the development and life of the world in which we live.

We don’t live in a society that exalts elders or looks to them for wisdom. I’ve accepted this. I have a platform, but very few older people do.

What I learn, I learn for me, and what I share, I share for me and anyone who wants me to share my ideas with them. I never offered without being asked, and the knowledge gathered by me is enough.

I cannot escape throwing old; I cannot escape poor health; I cannot escape death; I cannot escape being separated from those I love. My actions are my responsibility. This is a mantra for me; the more I accept it, the less fear I feel.

For me, there are two distinct parts to aging in a healthy and meaningful way. One is physical; the other is emotional.

Aging, like any other great passage in life, is about acceptance, not denial, openness not, fear, hope, not despair.

I am learning to grow old. I cannot escape growing old, and I’m not trying.

It is, for me, a time to harvest, not an eternal winter. I get to look deeply into my life, to change what I can change, to fix what I can improve, to look forward, not back, and think about my purpose in life. It is not to recede and shrink away.

I am learning to love and accept myself; it is a sweet and precious time.

I’ve learned that running away from fear only made me suffer more and made others suffer along with me. Indeed, I will have to grow old. And indeed, I have. It feels like a kind of miracle to me. Here I am.

“‎”With each experience,” writes Rabbi Yossi in the Kabbalah, “we grow and become more aware of the inner beauty within us. Ultimately we are truly our leaders. We lead the connection and flow of life that is our inheritance.”

This is a momentous time for me, full of seeking and yearning and changing while I can. It’s a time of calm, relief, liberation, learning, and revelation. I am finally old enough to see and think and feel. At last, I know what I can and can’t do.

I am my own leader.

It is not a time for grieving and lamenting but for living with gratitude and hope. The mystics wrote that our fear would cease when we get in touch with the truth that we cannot escape old age and death. I am free at last, free to grow.

Time for the harvest, not the tears.