Inevitability of Aging

As you know, birthdays make one thoughtful. If one is prepared to be honest, any birthday means one has aged. That makes me realize that whenever we speak of aging we use distancing language. We say words like "they," or "the aged." We say that "by the end of the century there will be such and such a percentage of our population and such and such an age" and so avoid the fact that we may well be part of that great impersonal statement. We are all, potentially and inevitably, the aged, the elderly, the old.