This is a book for those who are on the brink of “old age,” for those who have just received their first mail message from the Association of Retired People, and knowing themselves to be young and healthy, are very surprised by it.

But this book is am much for those who are concerned about their parents and the kind of issues older age may be raising in them.  It is also for those who want to reflect on the gradual effects of the aging process in their own lives.

This is, finally, a book for those who do not “feel” old, whatever their chronological age, but who one day realize with a kind of numbing astonishment that they have not managed to elude it.  They are older than they ever thought they could possibly become.  They are now called “seniors” of “the elders” or “the older generation,” even “elderly,” by the young around them, despite the fact that inside themselves they feel no different now than they did a year ago.  Except for the telling of the years, of course.  And, in the end, those make all the difference.

Indeed, they are old and getting older by the day.  At least as far as calendar days go.  But inside, they know themselves to be coming out of one part of life and going into another, clinging to one but unable to stop themselves from slipping into the other. And they don’t know what to think about it.  Is this the end of everything they know to be good and fulfilling in life?  Should they simply defer to the inevitable and accept their weary state?  Or is it only the beginning of whole new kind of life?  Are they at the moment of purposelessness?  Or is the purpose of life only now becoming visible?  Since many of us might spend nearly as many years out of the work force as in it, it is surely necessary, surely right, to give thought to what these years hold, what they demand, what they have to offer us all.  But that depends on whether or not we know what to look for as they come.

   --from the Introduction, The Gift of Years by Joan Chittister