The Enigma Of Arrival - pg. 190

On this walk, as on the longer walk on the downs past Jack's cottage, I lived not with the idea of decay -- that idea I quickly shed -- so much as with the idea of change. I lived with the idea of change, of flux, and learned, profoundly, not to grieve for it. I learned to dismiss this easy cause of so much human grief. Decay implied an ideal, a perfection in the past. But would I have cared to be in my cottage while the sicteen gardeners worked? When every growing plant aroused anxiety, every failure pain or criticism? Wasn't the place now, for me, at its peak? Finding myself where I was, I thought -- after the journey that had begun so long before -- that I was blessed.