Skip to main content Newsletter Sign In Search News Books & Culture Fiction & Poetry Humor & Cartoons Magazine Crossword Video Podcasts Archive Goings On Open Navigation Menu Fictio n February 17 & 24, 2020 Issue By Haruki Murakam i February 10, 2020 Illustration by Adrian Tomine What I find strange about growing old isn’t that I’ve got older. Not that the youthful me from the past has, without my realizing it, aged. What catches me off guard is, rather, how people from the same generation as me have become elderly, how all the pretty, vivacious girls I used to know are now old enough to have a couple of grandkids. It’s a little disconcerting—sad, even. Though I never feel sad at the fact that I have similarly aged. I think what makes me feel sad about the girls I knew growing old is that it forces me to admit, all over again, that my youthful dreams are gone forever. The death of a dr...