Aging: downward slide towards the grave; or a climb through life's experience towards wisdom?

With a modern world apparently obsessed with youth culture, how do you feel about aging?

It happens to all of us, as soon as we reach full adulthood – there is nothing beyond but getting older! So, are you personally terrified of aging? If so why? Or, do you welcome each year you are alive and express gratitude, wonder or joy at your own wisdom and ability to understand more?

We live in an age where many children around the world still don’t make it to adulthood because of poverty and disease; while in most western countries, issues with how to support an ‘aging population’ lie at the opposite extreme. Assuming that most of us here (fluther that is) are in the First or Western world, how does the prospect of a long life really affect you?