Reading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande and this part stuck with me. What will we do when we can no longer be independent due to aging? Part of me wanted to resist the question, not wanting to think about my independence being taken away, but it’ll happen to us all eventually.

Modernization did not demote the elderly. It demoted the family. It gave people - the young and the old - a way of life with more liberty and control, including the liberty to be less beholden to other generations. The veneration of elders may be gone, but not because it has been replaced by veneration of youth. It’s been replaced by veneration of the independent self.

There remains one problem with this way of living. Our reverence for independence takes no account of the reality of what happens in life: sooner or later, independence will become impossible. Serious illness or infirmity will strike. It is as inevitable as sunset. And then a new question arises: If independence is what we live for, what do we do when it can no longer be sustained?