{"id":752,"date":"2005-02-01T09:39:44","date_gmt":"2005-02-01T17:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/02\/01\/a-gift-of-getting-older\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:22:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:22:25","slug":"a-gift-of-getting-older","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/02\/01\/a-gift-of-getting-older\/","title":{"rendered":"A Gift of Getting Older"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>A great gift of getting older, of becoming old, is to realize that I, too, am a precious vessel &#8212; quite apart from any idea of self-worth I might have, quite apart from anything I may have accomplished.  I&#8217;m a precious vessel because of all that I&#8217;ve seen, all the stories I know, all the images and memories that will die with me.  In this way, we&#8217;re all precious vessels.  And it isn&#8217;t that we must get frantic about preserving all we&#8217;ve seen and all we know.  Preserving all the stories isn&#8217;t a human possibility, for all will be forgotten one day.  But to know that I&#8217;m such a vessel, as you are, makes me more attentive, makes me more available to anyone who asks for what I know, makes me speak more carefully, with less of the judgmental and more attention to nuance &#8212; makes me try to speak more slowly and reflectively, and to be like&#8230; an older man, the kind of older man I once admired:  tolerant, receptive, at ease in his age, not trying to be anything he isn&#8217;t, not trying to be younger.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Michael Ventura, &#8220;Across the Great Divide&#8221;; Psychotherapy Networker, Jan\/Feb 2005<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I love this guy; I&#8217;m grateful he pours out his words for the rest of us to soak up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A great gift of getting older, of becoming old, is to realize that I, too, am a precious vessel &#8212; quite apart from any idea of self-worth I might have, quite apart from anything I may have accomplished. I&#8217;m a precious vessel because of all that I&#8217;ve seen, all the stories I know, all the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,30,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","category-quotes","category-social-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12685,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions\/12685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}