The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

Eliot’s remark wryly captures a mid-to-late-life squeeze: professional and social expectations often peak just as energy, patience, and health begin to decline. The speaker is caught between two pressures—others’ increasing demands (because experience and authority make one valuable) and the inability to refuse without an accepted excuse. “Not decrepit enough” points to a cultural script in which age-related limitation is the only socially legible reason to step back; until then, one is presumed endlessly available. The line also hints at the psychological burden of responsibility and the difficulty of renegotiating identity and workload as one ages.