I had an interesting insight into aging (and my own attitudes) when my mother was in a nursing home. My mother was very badly off, and it showed. I was surprised when many other nursing home residents were kind to me and solicitous of my well-being.

Then I realized: why shouldn't they be a source of support for me? I was assuming, because they were old and using wheelchairs and walkers and in some cases facing death themselves, that they had nothing left to give. Boy, was I wrong; some of those dear people made the worst days of my life a lot brighter. Their compassion, intelligence and humor were intact regardless of their physical ills.

Before that experience, I would have said I have no prejudice toward the old, but I was wrong. I just had a prejudice I didn't know about yet.

When we say that what we see in the mirror doesn't match what we feel inside, we are (to some extent) making assumptions about what it feels like to be old. I suspect that some of our assumptions are wrong.