‘Change Your Life Today’: Beauvoir on Acting in the Present
A line from the closing pages of The Coming of Age that turns existentialist freedom into an instruction.
A book on aging *The Coming of Age* is one of the few sustained philosophical studies of old age in 20th-century thought. ## A directive, not a maxim Like much of Beauvoir's late work, the line uses the imperative because the philosophy demands it. ## Worth re-reading The book has been reissued repeatedly; its argument has only become more relevant.
Analysis
The line, whether or not the wording is exact, condenses the book's argument: that old age is not a fall from a previous self but a continuation of one, and that the projects you choose now are the ones that will define the later years.
https://quotedmind.com/article/beauvoir-change-your-life-today