You're not gross and sad for getting older. Here's how to think about aging instead

Connie Zweig first encountered her inner ageist on a cloudless spring day in Santa Monica about seven years ago.

The author and retired psychotherapist was enjoying lunch at her favorite vegan restaurant, Real Food Daily, when an old woman walked in and sat at the table next to her. The woman's clothes were worn and tattered, her fingernails dirty, her hair unkempt. As she began to order free samples of food, presumably because she couldn't afford to pay, Zweig noticed a feeling of disgust rising within her.

This is uncomfortable. I'll never be like that. I feel sorry for her.

Then she caught herself, took a breath and stopped. For decades Zweig had helped people interrogate the part of their minds outside of their conscious awareness — what the 20th century psychologist Carl Jung called "the