My life drags with lost momentum. Even in these recent days, with a job and plans for the future, I question my external value. From where will confidence come in 50 years without these activities to pad my identity?

The thought of growing old is frightening in a country that esteems beauty over age. The contractors at the end of my driveway watched my mom walk through the mud but later offered my roommate a ride to our door. Maybe it’s a silly reason to be somber. But there was something dull and devalued in my mom’s eyes even as she joked about the incident.

A forced smile. “Isn’t that funny?”

In this vein, a thought to reinfuse glory into our forward gaze:

“And their hands aren't gnarled, they're in love with the earth.
And they're dying to go there again.
We say the essence of life is strong in our youth,
Slowly buried under wrinkles of skin.

But there's God in the way that life comes to an end,
In the way that it draws to a close,
In the saying of soul to the house of the skin,
You're too weak now to really oppose.

Singing:
Take me,
Take me,
Write my name in the most Holy Tome.
And when it's my time
To assume the sublime,
Take me to my promised home.”

-Waterdeep, “Take Me”