At the very least, I do not want my sense of self to continue to develop & strengthen as I get older. I want it to be weaker & more muted so I can be more in present everyday reality, accept nature and the world for what it is, & appreciate it very much as a child would.

At the very least, I do not want my sense of self to continue to develop & strengthen as I get older. I want it to be weaker & more muted so I can be more in present everyday reality, accept nature & the world for what it is, & appreciate it very much as a child would.

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.

As we get older we either become our worst selves or our best selves

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes. It is equivalent to a sense of abusing the present.

A being who, as I grew older, lost imagination, emotion, a type of intelligence, a way of feeling things - all that which, while it made me sorry, did not horrify me. But what am I experiencing when I read myself as if I were someone else? On which bank am I standing if I see myself in the depths?

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you’re older, I think, is that — how to express this — you really must make the self. It's absolutely useless to look for it, you won’t find it, but it’s possible in some sense to make it.

When I lose my larger sense of supporting people to be their best, I lessen my contact with the God inside me.

"Every observer has noted that the younger the child, the less sense he has of his own ego. From the intellectual point of view, he does not distinguish between external and internal, subjective and objective. From the point of view of action, he yields to every suggestion, and if he does oppose to other people's wills — a certain negativism which has been called "the spirit of contradiction" — this only points to his real defenselessness against his surroundings. A strong personality can maintain itself without the help of this particular weapon. The adult and the older child have complete power over him. They impose their opinions and their wishes, and the child accepts them without knowing that he does so."

For so long, I gave in to my self-loathing. I refused to allow myself the simple pleasure of accepting who I am and how I live and love and think and see the world. But then, I got older and I cared less about what other people think.

I'm not much like myself any more.

I was slowly losing hold of my original and better self, and becoming slowly incorporated with my second and worse.