The Better Chancery Practice Blog

San hunters of the Kalahari

“Among the San Bushmen of South Africa … the hunt for game with poison-tipped arrows depends on moving rapidly across the veld. … When men become too old to participate in the hunt, they become makers of arrows — and tradition ascribes to the arrow maker the primary credit for the kill. … Similarly, only when women are too old for childbearing are they permitted to become shamanic healers, a translation of the love and care they have given their children to the health of the wider community. In both cases, an appropriately limited effort is recognized as having a profound value.”  —  Mary Catherine Bateson

“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”  —  Madeleine L’Engle

“When I was young, I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.”  —  W. Somerset Maugham