Statistics tell us that we are millions of elders across the world. Some images of life unsettle us, leading us to wonder what we shall do when they finally reach us.

Or how we shall live the days of retirement, of the absence of family and friends who departed earlier, preceding us in their return to the spiritual homeland.

Passing by an apartment block, it is common to see an elderly man, tall and strong, sitting on a bench before one of the buildings.

There he remains, exactly as the lines of popular song say: Watching life go by.

He does not return our greeting. Each time, the gaze he casts upon us seems harsh, as though disenchanted with life, disappointed to have awakened once more in the body.

His face translates the sorrow of solitude in which he insists on dwelling. Everything in him seems to declare he desires no one nearby.

Will it be thus that we shall live our future days?

We once read that life does not care for monotony. Nothing that exists repeats itself.

When we say that everything is the same, we are entirely mistaken.

Minutes weave into hours, which pile into days and nights, into months and years.

And yet nothing, ever, is the same.

The rain that fell in the night seeped into the earth, swelled the rivers, washed the streets. But those waters will never return.

Tomorrow it may rain again. But it will be other waters, new dispatches from the heavens, in greater or lesser measure. Never the same.

The garden that today rejoiced in the waking of rosebuds will tomorrow display other hues, in multiple unfoldings.

Birds will come again to visit the trees, to bathe in the improvised fountain before our home, never repeating the same flight, the same song.

How then can we walk toward the debut of old age as though expecting nothing more from life, from the world, from people?

The experience we have gathered along the years is beyond compare. Others may have amassed greater or smaller stores - professional, familial, intellectual - but ours is unique.

For each of us is unique. Immortal beings, temporarily dwelling in a body, upon an Earth of fleeting seasons.

How much we still have to offer life in the years that remain! Let us prepare to live days without clocks, days in which we may create our own time.

Time to wander, to study what we could not until now, to volunteer at a charitable institution, offering what we possess that is good and useful.

Things that gladden us, that make us feel active, alive, industrious.

Perhaps we might even become that elder with a child's eyes. Curious, smiling at all that arrives.

Too busy living each day, each new moment as something unforeseen, something unexpected.

Prepared for when the embrace of death shall come, yet in no haste for its arrival, for there is still so much to give in this world of forms and endless needs.

To grow old need not mean weariness, discouragement, disillusion.

It can be the debut of new moments, new experiences, of precious creations each day. New, spectacular days.

Spiritist Moment Team, inspired by the article
 Só para amadores by Cris Paz, published in 
Vida Simples magazine, ed. 249, year 20.
September 30, 2025