Beauvoir wrote this when she was 55, which would have been around 1964. I find it oddly comforting to be feeling the same thing now that I am 55. We all like to think that we are unique, and we are told this repeatedly when we are young, but I question this. I think that each generation of humans goes through the same realization that we will grow old and must die eventually. Here is the rest of that quote: "...It's because of this discrepancy that when you've laid your stake on being -- and, in a way you always do when you make plans, even if you know that you can't succeed in being -- when you turn around and look back on your life, you see that you've simply existed. In other words, life isn't behind you like a solid thing, like the life of a god (as it is conceived, that is, as something impossible). Your life is simply a human life."
