I end this retrospective with an observation my younger self would have found surprising: namely, that the view from eighty is better than expected. Yes, I can’t deny that life in the later years is just one damn loss after another; but, even so, I’ve found far greater tranquility and happiness in my seventh, and eighth and ninth decades than I ever imagined possible. And there’s one additional bonus to aging: reading your own work can be more exciting! I have found that the memory loss that no one escapes has some advantages. As I turned the pages of “Three Unopened Letters,” “Love’s Executioner,” “The Wrong One Died,” among other stories, I felt myself burning with delicious curiosity. I had forgotten how they ended!
1 For a detailed discussion of this existential perspective and the theory and practice of a psychotherapy based upon it, see my Existential Psychotherapy (New York: Basic Books, 1980).
2 These differing visions were later published as Every Day Gets a Little Closer: A Twice-Told Therapy (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
Copyright ©1989 by Irvin D. Yalom
Paperback afterword copyright © 2012 by Irvin D. Yalom
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Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy Page 33