S. N. Behrman, one of our fine writers of the comedy of ideas, used to bemoan not the loss of his talent—right to the end, his mind was prickly—but what he called vitality. How much of what’s called talent, he used to say, derives from that astonishing foolhardiness that comes with energy! For nearly all of us that kind of fervor is an experience we know only in youth: insatiable appetite, spread-eagle curiosity, no end of time, a mind and a heart open to any experience, fearlessness in general.

Later in life we take naps in the afternoon.

Is it helpful for us to be kind to ourselves? To others, of course. But when we’re alone, which is most of the time, isn’t it better to face the facts of life as it moves on, and death as it comes, without self-favoring, to acknowledge simply: That’s the way it is.