It is not all bad this getting old ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.
Wishing to be friends is quick work but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.
To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.
Age is not all decay it is the ripening the swelling of the fresh life within that withers and bursts the husk.