Yes, I too think there is lots to be said for being no longer young: and I do most heartily agree that it is just as well to be past the age when one expects or desires to attract the other sex. It’s natural enough in our species, as in others, that the young birds should show off their plumage—in the mating season.
But the trouble in the modern world is that there’s a tendency to rush all the birds on to that age as soon as possible and then keep them there as late as possible, thus losing all the real value of the other parts of life in a senseless, pitiful attempt to prolong what, after all, is neither its wisest, its happiest, or most innocent period.
From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack
Compiled in Yours, Jack
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Our lives’ phases have joys and challenges unique to each phase. While convenient to use age as the indicator, the real age of a person is determined more in the way they have lived and how much (or little), not how long.
Live each phase to its fullest and move expectantly through each new phase as it manifests itself. Then the past phases will be beautiful memories, changes will become adventures and future phases will be dreams to come true.
In Phase,
Z gardener
Good Morning Garden 
A gardener offered this, “Feels here more like accumulation than a series of phases. Excepting, of course, when reminded by my knees, and by forgetting – what was it?
Cheers