Old age and aging is a time of great gathering, a time of sifting and a time of reaping the rewards of forgotten and neglected experience. Contemporary society worships youth: it worships strength; it worships image. It has a whole ideology of externality and it has no refined sense of the subtlety of the soul, the secrecy of the heart. Especially, it has no sensitivity of these interim regions where the great gatherings happen in human life.

John O’Donohue

Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World (Walking on the Pastures of Wonder in Europe).