From earliest times human beings have looked with dismay at the aging process. We have seen crows feet claw their way around the eyes of our grandparents, and then our parents. We have seen the wrinkles invade, first as faint lines, then as fissures in cheek and forehead, and finally as ugly furrows cutting down into lips that had once been smooth and beautiful.

We have seen bodies which had once been hard and sculpted turn to flab, then sag and fold, eventually becoming hunched and bowed in their ultimate obeisance to gravity.

And we have seen, in the latter stages of aging, bodies withered, skin hanging over bone; faces lined like road maps; eyes of dull staring where a bright twinkle had once been, sunk deep and dark in their sockets.

And the earth beckoned.

And now we, the baby boomers who came of age in the sixties and seventies, are finally hitting our 40's and 50's. We, who thought 30 was old and who reveled in Bob Dylan's tune "Forever Young", are now finding we are no longer young. And now we, after the passage of these 20 or 30 years, are beginning to see those signs of aging in ourselves.

We see a plumper face staring back in the mirror these days, with some puffiness under the eyes, a few faint lines here and there. And sometimes when we bend over to pick something up there is a barely perceptible grunt that escapes the throat as we stand up again. And when we get out of the car after riding around for an hour or two we feel a stiffness in the joints that's never been there before. And at the beach or poolside we spend more time lolling in the sun, less time frolicking in the water.

So now, after decades of supposed indestructibility, we are finally coming to the realization that, as it was for our parents and grandparents before us, so it is for us now: it is our turn - our turn for the aging process. And worst of all, we can do nothing about it, nothing to stave it off.

Or can we?