You end up as you deserve. In old age you must put up with the face, the friends, the health, and the children you have earned.

The line frames later life as a reckoning: the conditions of old age—appearance, relationships, health habits, and family dynamics—are portrayed as cumulative results of earlier choices, character, and conduct. It echoes a moral-causal idea (“you deserve what you get”), but with a wry, unsentimental edge typical of Viorst’s observational humor about adulthood and self-deception. Read generously, it urges responsibility: invest in friendships, care for your body, and parent with intention because time converts patterns into permanence. Read critically, it also exposes a harsh cultural tendency to blame individuals for misfortune, especially around aging and health, by implying outcomes are always “earned.”