Perhaps the closest experience to being cared for with love is to care for others with love. Many times in life we have to stop and face our fears, and old age and the disability that may accompany its final stage are among the most difficult encounters with those fears. The opportunity to care for another person, and to be cared for ourselves, offers both sides of this experience a unique possibility: to encounter the human spirit and the cycle of death and life. The truth is that both sides of this experience are capable of transforming life’s loneliest sufferings—even in all their tragic and crushing force—into an experience of connection, love, and the growth of the human spirit.

Aydin Areta