Aging & Wisdom Quote by Lynn Johnston

Optimism, here, isn’t sold as a personality trait. It’s framed as a practice: a small, stubborn refusal to let age become a closing argument. Lynn Johnston built a career drawing the quiet drama of ordinary life, and that sensibility is all over this line. It doesn’t promise that things will be good, or that you’ll feel good. It promises something narrower and, because of that, more believable: the future still contains at least one redeeming detail.

The phrasing matters. “No matter how old you are” speaks to the cultural script that treats aging as subtraction - fewer firsts, fewer surprises, fewer reasons to plan. Johnston counters that script without pretending mortality is negotiable. She’s not offering denial; she’s offering leverage. “Always something good” isn’t grand destiny; it’s the next phone call, the next meal, the next laugh you didn’t know was coming. The line is gentle, but its subtext is defiant: you don’t get to declare your own story over just because your body has started keeping louder records.

As a cartoonist, Johnston understands how hope functions in panels: it’s the beat that makes the heavier moment readable. Comics train you to look for the turn, the sliver of light in the mundane. That’s the intent here, too - a recalibration of attention. Aging becomes less about what’s been lost and more about staying receptive, insisting that anticipation is not the exclusive property of the young.