I have a part of me--the part that isn't neurotic and grasping and furious and begging--a part of me that is a very quiet, more mature, slightly wiser self. That has sprung very much from having lost a few people that I absolutely and simply couldn't survive without. And that has come from the early hardships I experienced as a single mother without any money and a colicky infant. And then a bigger boy. 

That wisdom has sprung mostly from getting older and realizing, you know, the Rolling Stones said, "You don't always get what you want, but you get what you need."

My experience is that you don't always get what you want. But you get what you get. As you get older, you start to work with what you're getting instead of crossing your arms bitterly because you didn't get what you wanted. "OK, here we are. A new twenty-four hours is starting right now, and this is what we've got on our hands now." 

Age is just such an incredible blessing, the softening and the rounding of corners. And the sort of meat-tenderizing effects of aging. Like being a stone in the river – the sanding down of the sharp edges.

- Anne Lamott, interviewed on Beliefnet.com