Dr. John A. King argues that refusing to step into elderhood leaves you stuck in middle age. Western culture treats aging as a liability, while many other cultures revere gray hair and beards as symbols of experience.
And I was talking to someone and he said— I said, you need— the term elder came up. He said, well, don't say that. Don't say that. I'm not that old. I said, brother, I just want to challenge you on that. If you're not graduating into an elder, then you're stuck in middle age. And that's where we did all our learning and all our breaking. At some point we have to turn around. And only in Western society has age— is age seen as detrimental and useless. In every other society and culture, gray hair, gray beard, that's the signs that you have lived life and got miles and made
