Everything about aging in my experience so far has been a plus. Except the death part!

Aging gains we actually notice

There's something refreshingly honest about this one. Most people spend their twenties and thirties resisting the idea that they're getting older, as if aging is some kind of slow disaster they need to postpone. But Steinem points to something actual: the daily experience of having more self-knowledge, fewer anxieties about what others think, and a clearer sense of what matters. That's not small stuff.

The real insight isn't that getting older is great—it's that we've been sold such a narrow story about it. We hear constantly about what we're losing: energy, appearance, relevance. What gets less airtime is what we're actually gaining: perspective, permission to stop performing, genuine wisdom about how people work. These aren't consolation prizes. They change the texture of daily life in ways younger people can't quite access yet.

The part about death is her way of being real about the elephant in the room. She's not pretending mortality doesn't matter. But she's separating the fact of aging itself from the existential dread we wrap around it. Most of us can do the same thing—actually enjoy the decade we're in instead of spending it bracing for the one after it.