1. Inevitability/Acceptance
To the next part, I can't speak from personal experience simply because I haven't been there yet. The truth is that while any one of us can die at any time, none of us really believe it's going to happen when we're young or even middle-aged. In our minds, we see ourselves living to be a ripe old age and dying in our sleep. Other people get cancer, or have heart attacks, or find themselves on the wrong end of a .45. But not us. We're invincible. Yet, as you enter your sixties and certainly your seventies, that delusion no longer holds up for the mere fact that time is running out...and I honestly don't know how people in those age brackets live with it. My maternal grandparents are in their eighties and both still in relatively good health; it's not like I want to ask them "Sohow does it feel knowing that today could be the last day?" That being said, I do think there's a time when you not only accept that your days are numbered, but that you don't necessarily fear it, either. Living a long life is not necessarily all it's cracked up to be; you can outlive everyone you love, including your own children (SEE: Rose Kennedy). The world changes around you and you're still set in the ways of the world as it was when you were more of a participant in it. Friends die at alarming rates. Your social calendar suddenly consists mostly of doctor visits and funerals. Many people didn't like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but again like with Generations, I liked the underlying theme of aging in it, particularly Stanforth's line that "We seem to have reached the age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away." It may be hard to fathom now for most of us, but we all may reach an age where the pain of having things taken away from us outweighs our desire to live...and that is when the predator of time finally wins its long hunt.