Lately I have been thinking a lot about old age. My parents are now both in aged care, and in my middle-aged life, now is the time when my friends’ parents are starting to die.

It is a very confronting time. Someone remarked to me a few years back when I was just starting to grapple with the reality of my parents’ ageing that nobody prepares you for this. When you are having babies you can walk into any bookshop and come out with your arms filled with all sorts of books examining every single facet of the process of procreation. Everything gets analysed. From before conception is even attempted to every detail of a baby’s or toddler’s development, there are copious volumes available covering every possible angle, and from every conceivable ideological standpoint. If you are attracted to free-range parenting, continuum concept principles, controlled crying nightmares and paleo diets for toddlers, there will be a book about it.

Now, I don’t know if people are just not interested in books about getting old (and perhaps I have blocked this out if it exists), but I don’t recall a similarly stocked section in any bookshop I’ve been in.

Nobody prepares you for this phase in your life.

Recently, I was at a funeral, musing on my friend’s father’s life, it came to me that this whole life-long learning thing has got some serious flaws. I mean, what is the point of learning so much throughout your life, when in the end you’re just going to die and you will end up taking most of it with you. Sure, I understand that we pass things on, and other people gain from the wisdom gained… sometimes. We spend every day learning new stuff, perfecting old stuff and searching for what we don’t yet know. But really, most of what we learn does not realise its potential. Often what is inside our brains does not venture into the outside world because we are afraid to make ourselves vulnerable. Fear keeps us from sharing our brilliance, and so it stays hidden. Perhaps the most frustrating element of this continuous process of learning is that it literally takes a lifetime to get to know oneself, or to get really good at doing something. By the time that happens, we are either too old to use the new skill, too old to care, or are suffering from dementia.

So what is the point of anything, I ask you? If there can be any answer to such an existential and kind of depressing question, it might be this: think less about the big picture, and focus more on the micro. When you are studying an ant crawl across a leaf, take joy in it. When you clink glasses with a friend, try to sear the taste, sounds, smells, and the joy you feel in your heart right at that moment into your forever memory bank. Even if you never return to that moment, it will be enough that you identified the moment as timeless. It will be enough that you tried to file it away into something resembling eternity.